One Hit
by SilverRaven16
Summary: Dash Baxter never thought that he'd one day be standing in front of a judge in court, being tried for a murder he didn't mean to cause. One hit, was all it took. One act taken too far. And now, Danny Fenton's blood was on his hands because of the jocks he used to call his friends. He's taken a human life away. He pleas for his innocence. But, will anyone bother to listen?
1. Chapter 1: Walking

Chapter 1: Walking

Dash's POV

Courthouse 09:00 hours

I, I can't say what I want anymore. I've lost my right to do so.

I walked towards the courthouse that morning, feeling absolutely horrible. I haven't slept since the day this happened. It was an accident I didn't mean to cause. Now I've lost everything.

And his family lost everything too.

No more football scholarship, no more going on to University, no more dreams of mine that are ever going to come true. Nobody believes me. Everybody think's I'm a monster. I just wish this nightmare would end already before I wind up hurting anybody else.

It was a straight way into the courthouse from the prison vehicle I was being escorted out of. Two guards grabbed my arms and started leading me into the building. Along the straight way into the building, a border of people from my school, my old friends, his family and the press watched me. Most of the looks were gazes of horror, while others were disappointed and a few were terrified. But none of them looked at all happy to see me.

I looked at the faces of Kwan, Star and Paulina, who had arrived to see what would happen to me. None of them are my friends now, but before this accident, they were. Kwan looked the most disappointed.

Kwan and I have been best friends since kindergarten. We were always the most athletic kids in the school. Taking home every single award and scholarship. When the accident happened, he told me he couldn't believe that somebody like me would be strong enough to end a human life. He said he'd be here, but that he couldn't be friends with somebody as dangerous as me.

I turned my gaze away from him and looked farther into the crowd. Suddenly, I spotted somebody I was hoping wasn't going to show up. His best friends, Tucker and Sam. Sam was wearing a shirt with his face on it, and Tucker shook his head uneasily as his eyes met with mine. Usually, that nerd is scared of me.

Never thought in my life, that I'd be scared of him.

Before I could gaze away from Sam, she yelled at me in her anger.

"How could you do something like this?!" She screamed. "Why did you have to go this far to hurt somebody?" I turned away, terrified to say anything. As I turned my head, my eyes saw someone else who I really didn't want to have to speak to.

His parents and his sister.

The three of them bawled as I walked towards the doors, ready to go through with this stupid trial already. The judge says I could be tried as an adult, but I'm too dangerous to go to a juve center so I might be sent to the actual town penitentiary. I never meant to hurt anyone this bad. I've been on the front pages all over the country, labeled as a monster.

And I'm really starting to believe them...

**This is so far, just an idea. Please, review and tell me whether I should continue it! I'd really want an opinion on such a short first chapter.**


	2. Chapter 2: Where My Problems Started

Chapter 2: Where My Problems Started

Casper High 09:16 am

Dash's POV

It was just a normal day. Another day at school. To reminisce about that day is hard for me to do, because I'm still in shock with disbelief about everything that's happened. I remember it just being a typical morning at school, mostly.

I remember my friends and I were throwing a ball back and forth down the hallways, mainly because we'd all just came back from early morning practice, trying to get our team ready for the finals that were happening later that week. I was being hailed by my team for making one of the biggest plays of the game, and we were stoked for our American Football title that was just days away from being ours.

"That was the best turn over I've ever seen before!" My friend Kwan smirked, passing the ball to me. "We just cleaned that team out on Friday!" I caught the ball and passed it to Barry, my team's reciever.

"Next stop, championships boys." I exclaimed. "Before we get that title though, we gotta work on our formation a bit better guys. That was hilarious when Kwan tripped right over his own two feet and still caught the ball." Kwan's face lit up.

"Hey, I didn't trip..." He sneered. "I swan dived. Big difference there." Suddenly the ball came back to me again from my friend Michael. I laughed at my buddy's reaction, knowing that he completely screwed up but was still willing to cover up his mistakes by "disguising them". I spun the ball on my finger like a basketball.

"Okay, twinkletoes. Save the swans for your dance classes..." I smirked, causing Kwan to give me a light slap upside the head. I laughed. "We'll get that uniform of yours fitted with a tu tu or something. Nice and pink, just for you." My team laughed even harder as we just stampeded through the halls. Just as we came steps from my locker in the east wing of the school, I looked over Barry's shoulder as I gripped the ball in my hands. Behind him, I spotted Danny Fenton and his two geekwad friends standing at his locker, talking probably about something stupid like videogames or those stupid little Japanese comic books that I always see Foley reading when he's in class. Foley, Fenton and that goth chick were always getting on my nerves. But, no one got under my skin more than Danny Fenton, a cocky mouthed, scronny little geek who I haven't been able to stand for years. I'm not jealous of his brains. I'm not jealous of his friends. He and I have a past of butting heads that dates back all the way to elementary.

My friends looked at Fenton's group after I stopped staring at them and laughed at him.

"Look at his scronny little arms..." Barry mumbled. "And his bony little face."

"He's pretty puny alright." Kwan smirked. "Probably isn't even enough meat on his bones to cannibalize in a survival situation. He'd be like picking the remaining fruit off an apricot core."

"What did Paulina see in that dweeb anyway?" Michael sneered. "Remember? Paulina turned down your offer to go out with her at the waterslide park and wound up going home with him?"

"What does that nerd have that was so unresistable that Paulina just dumped you for her?" Barry said with confusion. Suddenly, that remark made me curious too. I guess that reality never really crossed my mind until then. What did Fenton have that I didn't? Why did she just, leave me a broken wreck for some puny unstuddly creep like him?

"No kidding." I growled. "Why did Paulina just dump me for him like that? What's he got that I don't?" Michael crossed his arms and smiled.

"I don't think that was very fair of him to just steal something you've been trying so hard for." He sneered. "Considering that you've been trying to win Paulina's heart for quite a while now, and he's done it three times already." Barry glared at Fenton and smiled.

He growled. "Maybe, a little well deserved payback's in order."

I felt a smile creep onto my face slowly as the thought of getting a little payback for a good laugh bricked my mind. I love a little revenge. Fenton's stolen my girlfriend, put Fenton Wipe in my locker, somehow glued my shoes to the ground and has tripped me enough over the past few months of school for me to want a little payback of my own.

Michael laughed. "You should seriously go and kick his ass for what he did, man"

"Yeah man, he stole your girl and made you have to buy a new pair of shoes." Barry sneered."You should seriously go and mess him up for it." I smiled at them, but I sighed.

"Maybe after the championships boys." I muttered. "I can't get suspended now. Well get pulverized in the tournament if I wind up in Lancer's office." Kwan stayed silent, but Barry and Michael laughed even harder.

"What's the matter Dash?" They sneered. "Scared that Fenton's gonna kick your ass?"

I felt my mind suddenly start to feel, constricted. I wasn't scared of Fenton. I wasn't scared of anybody in Casper High! I didn't want to jepordize my team's chances of winning the title by getting myself suspended for something like this. I was ticked that Danny has done some things to me, but I wasn't seeing clearly. I growled at my friends.

"No, I'm not scared of that little weasel!" I grunted. "I'll wring his little pencil neck out before he can even touch me. No way, am I scared of him." Barry and Michael gave me another glance that made my mind feel like it was being pressured.

Barry crossed his arms and glared at me. "Then prove it, Mr. Tough Guy."

"Yeah, show us why you're called the powerhouse!" Mike smirked. "I wanna have a little entertainment to watch before I go to class."

I felt myself freeze up. Suddenly, Barry raised his eyebrows at me and took his phone out of his pocket as a joke.

"Come on dude." He laughed. "You wouldn't want Paulina finding out that you let Fenton walk all over you. That'll make you look even weaker than ever."

I felt Barry and Michael grab my shoulders and push me towards Fenton. Right now, I was angry. Angry that Fenton really did steal Paulina away from me. I was angry that I had to spend an additional 200 bucks on shoes when he glued me to the ground. I was ticked about what my friends had told me about him and now, I was to the point of breaking. Somewhere inside, I could feel my insides boiling. And now, whether I liked it or not, I was gonna have to beat him up for it. To release the stress, the pressure. Just as Fenton and his friends turned around to head to english, I stopped the three of them with a yell as Mike and Barry walked on each side of me, encouraging me.

"Hey Fenturd!" I called out. "I've got some unfinished business with you!"

That was all I could remember before I was seeing red...

**Please, review this chapter and continue reading this story once it updates! I'd love to see what you think of it. People told me to continue this story, so I did. :) I destroyed my rough draft and wrote this entire chapter from scratch. So PLZ R& R. :D**

**PEER PRESSURE!**


	3. Chapter 3: A Bad Decision

Chapter 3: A Bad Decision

09:20 hours

Dash's POV

At that second, time felt like it was literally standing still. I was so blinded by anger, so frustrated with Fenton and completely infuriated with rage that I was literally seeing blood red. He gave me a stern glare as I walked up to him, with my fists clenched at my sides.

"You've got a hell of a lot of nerve, Fenton!" I growled. "Stealing my girlfriend, sabotaging me and Paulina's relationship as friends in the process?" Danny looked up at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Whoa, what are you talking about?" He asked me. "Me stealing Paulina from you? When was this?" Sam and Tucker crossed their arms at me as I felt my face becoming beet red.

"What do you mean, when was this?!" I barked. "The dance comes up, and you steal my girlfriend! I ask her out at the waterpark, and you steal her again like twenty minutes after I asked her out! You've seriously gotta have something wrong with your head if you thought you'd be able to get away with messing with me like this!" Suddenly, Danny stepped towards me.

"Well, you've seriously gotta have something wrong with your head if you're going to start bothering me right now." He said, raising his voice. "I never stole your girlfriend! Ever!" From behind me, Kwan, Barry and Michael suddenly stepped forward to try and intimidate Fenton into backing off. Regardless, he stayed still, keeping his feet planted while the goth girl and the techno geek to his left and right lowered their glances and glared at me. I stayed red faced.

"You think I don't notice when I see Paulina walking off with you from school?" I asked him, gritting my teeth. "How do you explain why Paulina went to the dance with you? Or how she wound up leaving with you at the waterpark, huh?" Danny rolled his eyes at me, keeping his eyes glaring right into mine. Before he could say anything, Sam cut him off by glaring aggressively at Kwan and Mike, causing them to back up again. Cowards...

"Dash, I'd back off if I were you..." She growled. "Who do you think you are bothering Danny about some shallow prep when he's got better things to worry about?" I grinded my teeth aggressively. Danny's hands were at his sides, and I watched as they instantly became fists as Sam finished speaking. Right then, I still had the will to just, walk away. To just leave, but I felt drawn. If I didn't do something about my problems with Fenton, Barry said he'd tell Paulina that he completely walked all over me. I felt my rage destroy these thoughts as Danny focused his eyes on me.

He muttered. "Paulina has only gone out with me maybe, twice. And the only reason she went to the dance with me was because I gave her a necklace in my backpack! I never stole anything from anybody!" My mind was numb. I could hear his explanations, but I couldn't understand them. All I could feel was anger. Fury. Danny took another step forward toward me and I clenched my hands tighter together. He growled another slur.

"Maybe she didn't go out with you because she see what kind of person you really are?"

...That's where I lost it.

I felt my brain snap. In a second, I was in a rage. Without a thought of consequence, I rushed at Fenton and pushed him backwards, completely infuriated with what he'd just said.

"What'd you just say, Fenturd?!" I yelled, as I got into his face and pushed him backwards with my chest. Danny instantly became offensive with me.

"Back off Dash!" He scowled, suddenly pushng me away with his hands. I pushed him back. From behind me, Barry and Michael started cheering a familiar chant, which only pumped me up.

"Fight, fight, fight, fight!" They chanted, pumping their fists into the air. Kwan stayed with his arms crossed behind me, trying to stay out of this while the others cheered hoping that I'd beat Fenton into the ground. Sam and Tucker grabbed Danny by his shoulders, coaxing him to just walk on, but he kept his ground. I cracked my knuckles, pushing him backwards again.

"You think you can just push me?" I shouted. "You think you can just steal my girlfriend, lie to my face and think you're just gonna walk away from this without a soveigner?" Sam looked at me with a slightly worried glare as I suddenly raised my hands out in front of me.

"Dash, calm down." She warned, but I ignored her. I went into my boxing stance, but Fenton just stood still, keeping his eyes locked on mine.

"What? Does the truth hurt?" He sneered at me. "All you are is a hotheaded idiot who lets the pain of others bring in a good laugh! She probably saw that and realized she didn't want to have to get stuck dealing with you." Suddenly...

BOOM!

"Danny!" Sam cried. At that second, I didn't know why she'd called his name, but when I looked down I could clearly see why.

Danny was now on the ground.

Not a thought. Not a single memorable action. I couldn't remember bring my hand up to punch him. I couldn't remember even winding up to hit him. The only thing that kicked my brain back into reality was a sudden pain that came from my knuckles when the hit made contact. My rage slowly started to disolve, thinking that I'd just hit him and he went down like a one hitter quitter. From behind me, my friends cheered me on, laughing at Fenton who had hit the ground like a stone. Mike gave me a pat on the back. Barry gave me a punch on the arm. But as Sam and Tucker fell to Danny's side to check up on him, Kwan wasn't laughing or cheering. He looked at Fenton uneasily.

"That doesn't look right." He said with a worried tone in his voice. "I mean, I'm in boxing training and I've knocked out a dozen people. But..." Kwan's eyes instantly widened. "Something's wrong!"

I turned around from looking at Kwan and looked back at Fenton, who was just spayed on the ground, not even twitching. Sam and Tucker looked at their friend and started to panick as they called his name and he wasn't responding. His head on the left side was red from where I'd hit him, slightly swelled up from the punch and I could see a dark indent from my knuckle on his left temple. Sam and Tucker shook him as they kneeled on the ground to try and get him to wake up, but he continued to show no responses.

"Danny? Danny, can you hear me?" Sam asked as she shook his shoulder.

"Dude, come on. Say something!" Tucker pleaded, shaking Danny again. Danny just stayed completely still. I've knocked a nerd or two out before, but now I could see what Kwan was talking about. Something wasn't right about how Fenton was laying. His friends kept on shaking him, but were still getting no reaction from him. Kwan walked over and nealed next to Danny to see if he was going to be okay, but I could tell by the look in Kwan's face that he wasn't.

I stood unsure of what to do. One minute I was angry, and now I didn't know what to feel. My emotions were completely stilled. Michael and Barry booked it down the hall to avoid getting into trouble, but I stood unaware whether I should follow them or stay behind. Kwan grabbed Sam by her shoulder as she kept trying to wake up her friend.

"I'm gonna get Lancer." He said reassuringly. Kwan stood up and ran towards english where we currently were supposed to be. I looked down at Sam and Tucker, blankly. I walked towards them, but Sam shot a glare at me that even scared me from coming closer.

"Get outta here!" She shrieked as I tried again to walk towards them. "Can't you see you've done enough here?!" Fenton still stayed still without a movement. I suddenly felt a panicking feeling build up inside. I knew Lancer was going to get here soon, and I knew that once he did show up, I was going to get into serious trouble. Especially if Danny didn't wind up waking up beforehand. I had to get out of there. To run away. But my feet stood still like I was glued to the ground again.

Lancer came to the scene in minutes, and still Fenton stayed unconscious and I still stood frozen. The teacher glanced at Danny and instantly glanced up at Tucker.

"Tucker, you have a cell phone?" He asked him, which the techno geek nodded slowly. "I want you to call 911, now! He's going into shock!"

And all that it took, was one hit.

**Please Read and Review! I managed to update this story a little faster than I'd predicted so, I wanna know how you think! :D**


	4. Chapter 4: Consequence

Chapter 4: Consequence

10:02 hours

Dash's POV

It was only minutes after 911 was called that an ambulance showed up on school property, and behind it were two flashing police cruisers which at the time, didn't send any sort of chill down my spine. I finally managed to shake off my numb mind and walk from the scene of the fight, and I walked outside to watch Fenton get carried out of the school on a stretcher. In the parking lot, I could see his folks in their stupid looking van and I could see his sister rushing into the driver's seat of her car, reluctant to follow the ambulance to check on her little brother while Sam and Tucker climbed in the back seats. As I walked outside, Barry, Mike and Paulina caught up with me at the doors, all of them with scared expressions on their faces. My face? I couldn't tell what expression it had. Running from the ambulance, Kwan caught up with me at the same time. But out of all the expressions on my friends faces, his was the most scared looking.

I sighed. "So, what's wrong with Fenton?"

Suddenly, Kwan raised his hands up at me frustratedly.

"Are you seriously asking me that right now?" He snapped. "Danny's really hurt, dude! His head is swelled up really badly where you hit him, and he's not responding at all. The guy in the ambulance said he might have severe head trauma." Barry and Mike looked at me uneasily.

"Dude, you really screwed up this time..." Mike said with shock. "If Fenton's going to the hospital, I guess their goes our quarterback..."

"And our chances at the high school football title..." Kwan sighed. Suddenly, Paulina looked up at me with fear, trying not to get too upset with me considering that I was still processing what had just happened.

"Dash, please tell me you didn't just make the biggest mistake in your life." She winced. "I really hope that Danny's going to be alright. I might not really care what happens now, but you better hope he's not seriously injured." I sighed uneasily at her, still feeling slightly numb in my head.

"I don't know what just happened..." I muttered, realizing that this was all starting to set in. "I just, lost it on him! He deserved a hit to the face, but..." Paulina suddenly slapped me right across the face. I lifted my hand up to feel my cheek, which didn't even sting. But the emotional pain that ignited that hit was clearly visible in Paulina's eyes.

"Nobody deserves to get hit but you!" She snapped. "I understand that you really don't like him, and that you two have your pasts, but seriously! You could wind up getting expelled if he's not okay!"

As Paulina's words registered into my head, suddenly my feelings of rage, numbness and fury were replaced with some more sickening feelings, Guilt, sadness and panic. I felt my heart sink into my feet as my friends glanced hopelessly at me. I felt my stomach start to turn anxiously. Barry grabbed me by my shoulder to try and get me to talk again.

"Dude, it's alright." He coaxed. "It's probably no big deal. He'll wake up, just watch!" As Barry stopped, I felt something instantly return from inside that I thought disappeared from me. My anger. I ripped Barry's hand away and glared at him.

"Don't you touch me!" I grunted, getting his hand off of me. "If I didn't listen to you, I wouldn't be in this mess right now! Look what you made me do, dude! I'm now in huge trouble because of you!" Barry suddenly became offensive with me.

"Hey, I wasn't the one who was stupid enough to actually do it!" He sneered. "If you should be blaming anybody for this mess, it should be yourself! I never hit him!"

"But it was your idea!" I shouted back. Barry quickly got in my face aggressively.

"Yeah, but I didn't act out my own ideas!" He scowled. "I was just teasing you, bro. Now look what happened! You can't blame me for this! I was only trying to get on your nerves to bug you! I was kidding around." I growled at him with frustration.

"You think this is funny, you idiot?!" I yelled again. "You think this is some kind of joke now?! How's this for a joke!" Suddenly, Barry and I raised our hands up to one another.

Before the two of us wound up getting into it, Kwan jumped between us and held us back from each other. Our arguing over this suddenly caught the attention of somebody I really was hoping wouldn't figure out who did this. From the ambulance which took off out of the parking lot, Lancer glanced at us as Kwan muscled his way in between me and Barry. Raising an eyebrow, he walked towards us with a stern look on his face. He looked at us, furiously.

"Mr. Baxter and Mr. Thompson!" He growled. "Stop trying to rip each other's throats out, please! What just happened was a serious medical emergency and now I need to know who is responsible for this! Mr. Fenton is in an undetermined state right now. And I have a feeling that one of you meatheads at the scene was the cause of it!" I felt my eyes widen, but I once again was petrified to move another step. Lancer sighed. "I want all of you but Paulina in my office right now! Kwan, you're coming too. I know that I can't just go around blaming you people for what's happened, but you are the only witnesses and suspects I have for right now. Until I get some answers, you kids are both the culprits as well as victims."

My crew looked at Lancer with uncertainty. Immediately Paulina walked along, but the four of us were glared at and dragged by the backs of our jackets down to Satan's chamber, also known as Lancer's office. At the time, I didn't feel the numbness completely go away and hide behind my fear and panic. I just watched Fenton when he was on the ground like he was just air floating past my face, emotionlessly. I didn't feel like I'd done anything wrong, but I knew I did. The guilt was beginning to settle in slowly, but the guilt was blocked by a certain, uncertainess. Lancer had me and Barry by our collars, pulling us towards his room hoping we'd spill about what happened. Just as Lancer pulled us in front of his office doors, I felt that void of numbness instantly fade away.

This was when the guilt finally clicked.

"You four boys are going to be in a lot of trouble if I don't get to the bottom of this mess..." Lancer groaned as he grabbed and twisted the door knob on his office door, pushing the heavy door open. I felt my legs freeze up again, or at least they tried to. Lancer pulled me aggressively into the room and pointed a set of chairs in front of his desk. "May you gentlemen have a seat? Now!"

Barry and my boys looked at me with weird glances as they sat in front of Lancer and I stayed still standing behind them. An empty seat in front of Lancer's desk where I was supposed to sit just stayed empty as I refused to move another step. Lancer didn't care. He merely sat hoping to get his answers, and he didn't care whether one of us was being an idiot by refusing to take his seat. He placed his hands on the table in somewhat of a Burns fashion, curling his fingers and he glanced at us with his head slightly tilted downwards. Creepy...

"I don't understand something about this mornings little, unfortunate and completely undaunting affair." He said sternly, looking at me impatiently because I only understood the first three words of what he'd said. "You four jocks were supposed to be in my english class at the time of this incident. And yet, none of you bothered to show up at all. How about an explanation, boys?" Kwan nervously pulled his jacket sleeve as Barry and Mike glanced at him for some kind of answer. Kwan took a deep breath.

"We, we, were headed there sir." He stuttered. "Football practice dragged on this morning and, we just came back from the field." Lancer suddenly put a finger to the soul patch on his chin as Kwan stopped speaking. He raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't look at him at all.

"I see you seem to have some kind of, stuttering issue, Mr. Smith?" He growled. "I've never see you stutter before. So, why start now? Is it because you might be hiding something from me? Something that you'd like to share?" Kwan's face started turning red. I looked at Kwan using only my eyes, not wanting to move my neck in case I just freaked out. Kwan swallowed.

"N,no sir." He muttered. This time, Lancer looked up at him and smiled.

"So, you would not like to share anything you might be hiding?" He sneered. Kwan's face suddenly became worried looking. In a second, he shook it off.

"I'm not hiding anything." He said with a deep voice. Lancer glared at us menacingly. His stare usually sent a bad feeling down into your stomach, but this was just overkill. His eyes were just painful to look at. But I'm guessing that he could say the same thing about me. I felt like I was puppy eyed.

He smirked. "You're not hiding anything, Kwan? That's funny. You sure don't stutter or turn red on any other occassion when you're talking to me. What makes this conversation so different? Is there something you'd like to talk about? Get off of your chest?" Instantly, my heart sank again. Kwan looked like he was about to completely break open. Barry and Mike were terrified, Kwan looked like he was dramatized, and I was paralyzed from doing anything but stand there like an idiot hoping that my best friend wasn't about to let everything out. Kwan breathed calmly.

"What's there for me to hide, sir?" He suddenly said quirked which made me sigh with relief. "I was with Danny, remember? The boys went off to find you and Dash stayed with me to help. I'm not hiding anything." I felt my heart pull itself back up. Even though I was scared he'd blow it, I knew my best friend would never let me just go down like this. But looking at Lancer, he didn't look convinced at all by Kwan's story. Well, some of it was true. Just, not the parts he didn't see.

"Hmph, we'll see who isn't hiding anything." Lancer sneered. "I'm going to pick you four clean. By the time I talk with you individually, I guarantee I'll find what I'm looking for." Suddenly, he looked right at me.

"Even if I have to tear your little heart apart, ligament by ligament."

With that said, I found my freezing up was slowly disappearing. I finally gained enough movement to speak again, but I hesitated.

"Well, h, how can you be so sure we did this?" I asked unsurely. "Their's about five hundred kids in this dinkwater school. How can you be so sure one of us is who's responsible?" I felt myself freeze up again as Lancer kept his eyes glued on mine. He had an angry looking glare as he stared me down for a few seconds, but he kept his tone strict as usual.

"I've been in this business longer than most teachers, Mr. Baxter." He scowled. "I can read students like twelve hundred paged novels. They're complex. They're well brought up. But they're incredibly predictable and they all seem to drag on truths until the very end. You read a book to figure out what happens. But, do you know how to skip all the reading so you can just see what truth the character was looking for? Do you?" I blinked at him unsurely, only catching about half of what he'd just said. He sighed.

"You get the book to open up. Then, you merely miss the explanations and read the final chapter. You don't need to explain yourselves for me to just read right through you. I know you all seem to carry some kind of, weight on your shoulders from this morning. Kwan, you're dramatized from helping out, which I thank you for. But why the three of you seem like you're dramatized or scared is beyond me. I never saw you two around when me and Kwan were helping Mr. Fenton. And Dash, you just stood zoned out behind us like you were lost in translation. Danny was on the ground, and you just stood watching him like he was a highliter on a black floor." Lancer crossed his arms.

Instantly, the four of us went dead silent. Lancer sat waiting, but an answer wasn't coming anytime soon from any one of us. I was internally freaking out with guilt, but I tried to stay calm. Kwan was out of stories. And dumb and dumber just sat there hoping Lancer would just let us all go back to our normal lives. Lancer suddenly stood up and sighed again, shaking his head back and forth which made my stomach turn with each movement.

"The silent treatment doesn't work with me, boys." He muttered. "If you're not going to give me information standing side by side, maybe seperating you from your little companions will let the truth flow out. But until I get what I'm asking for...

You boys aren't going anywhere..."

**Please, Read and Review! Chapter 5 is up as well so please keep reading!**


	5. Chapter 5: Betrayal

Chapter 5: Betrayal

10:45 hours

Dash's POV

Lancer pushed the four of us outside of his office to sit just outside of his door. Six chairs outside in the hall, and my friends sat at the far end with me as I sat on the farthest chair from the door. He'd said he wanted answers out of us one way or another. So instead of keeping us together, he was planning on getting us to crack, one by one.

One thing I was never good with was pressure. Sure, I had the football team's fate on my shoulders, and yeah, I was always under pressure doing sports because I'm better than everybody else. But now I had the weight of somebody's condition on my head, and it weighed me down like a 10 ton bar bell. Just over an hour ago, I was having a normal day. Now, I felt like the guilt was turning me inside out. Regardless of what Lancer was going to do to us, I just felt in the pit of my gut that my friends weren't going to let me go down for this. I knew that they'd lie for me like Kwan did to cover my tracks, just like in a football game. They wouldn't let me, their friend and Casper High's quarterback to go down without a fight. I knew they'd help me. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a weird feeling that maybe, I was wrong.

I sat down, sweating. Barry and Mike were looking at me while I sat with my eyes glued to the door, waiting for Lancer to come back out and call us in one by one. Kwan crossed his arms and sighed, causing Barry and Mike to take their glances off of me.

"No matter what happens here, we've gotta get ourselves to that Championship game." He muttered. "I'm not going to say anything about what happened between us and Fenton, but I'm not sure what Lancer's going to say. But one thing's for sure, I'm not going to crack for him. No way." He looked at me and nodded. I exchanged a small nod back to him, but Barry and Mike sat without nodding at all. A nod in the sporting industry among teammates is kind of a, reassuring thing. It kind of shows that we'll all keep our word and trust each other. But Barry and Mike just sat looking at Kwan blankly.

"Bro, we've got this down." Barry sneered. "I ain't gonna say anything. If one of us is going down, we all go down. Then, their goes our chances at the title and our team!"

"Better just to save the team and keep our hopes up for the game." Mike said uneasily. "If any of us winds up in trouble for this, sure, we have our backup player on the sidelines to take our place but, that basically will kill our chances of winning. Casper High has never gotten this far in the league in our entire team's history. My dad was a Raven, and now I am. But we've never gotten all the way to the finals." I felt the weight of guilt slightly lift off of me. Thinking of the game made my mood change a little. But thinking of what might happen to me that would stop me from playing made me worry. I wanted the boys to win the game, and I wanted to be there. It was all we cared about. But that feeling in the back of mind kept on telling me that, maybe, things weren't exactly going to work like I wanted them to.

"Michael Edwards?"

The four of us turned to Lancer's door, where he stood impatiently holding the door open with his back. He was only there for a few seconds of our conversation, considering I heard him open the door when Mike was talking. Lancer glared at Mike, who stood up and walked into his office slowly. As Lancer closed the door behind him, I felt my stomach turn, feeling like I was going to be next to go up and talk. Kwan and Barry looked back at me as I felt my face tense up.

"You guys don't think Mike's gonna say anything, do you?" I asked them. They shook their heads.

"No, Mike?" Barry said with a shrug. "He's pretty solid. I'm sure he's got your back bro. No problem."

"Well, remember this boys," Kwan said sternly. "We're all bros. And if we wanna get to that game, we gotta do what's right for the team. We need all of us there, regardless."

"It's either that, or we lose." I said unsurely. "But if Fenton doesn't wake up, I'm gonna be up this creek without a paddle. I could wind up expelled, or worse!" Kwan leaned back in his chair.

"What could be worse than expulsion in this rinky dink little school?" He asked. I shook my head.

"I'm not talking about school issued punishment, dude. I'm talking about me getting into trouble with the cops. I can't get charged with assault, dude! They'll never let me play sports again if I wind up getting any form of criminal record!"

Barry sighed. "Dude, relax. You're only fifteen. The cops have better things to do than write up yet another juvy record when they could be out there catching the real criminals. By the way dude, I'm pissed at you for trying to pin this whole mess on me. That was low, bro." Suddenly, I felt my anger rise up again, ready to go round two with Barry and his big mouth. Before the two of us could be at each other's throats again, Kwan sensed that we were about to fight and he grabbed Barry's chair, pulling him away from me a couple of inches. This stopped us from fighting, but it also stopped all talking. The three of us sat in silence. Eerie, unsettling, silence.

Ten minutes passed. Not a word. Thirty minutes. Still nothing. The three of us stayed with our eyes glued to the wall. Kind of reminded me of a school scenerio of what death row feels like. Now the only thing that would make this death row would be my lobster dinner given to me before I wound up dead. Mike was released in about forty five minutes, and then Kwan took his place. Another forty five minutes of silent torture, and Barry was called in after Kwan was set free. Why Lancer was saving me for last was torturing me. I just wanted to get this over with. I wanted to lie so I would be released too. But as another forty five minutes passed, I felt like time was at a stand still again. Just as time felt like it was stopped, I heard the door open again, as well as Lancer's footsteps on the tiled floor.

"Mr. Baxter?"

I looked back at the door, watching as Barry walked out of his office and sat back down in the hall with the others. I stood up, knob kneed, walking uneasily through the hallway to Lancer's door. I walked passed Lancer and entered the room, taking a seat in front of his desk now really feeling like I was on death row. He sat in front of me at his desk again, but his face wasn't just unhappy looking. It looked like he was about to blow up. I gulped.

"So, four little birds, and three different stories." He growled. "I wanted answers, and now, I'm with their leader. Little birds chirp little stories, Mr. Baxter. Who would of known that all of them would be pointing right at you."

I felt my body become weak with disbelief, unsure whether I wanted to know what information Lancer had collected from my so called friends, or if he was just trying to mess with my mind. He continued as I felt my sweating becoming worse.

"Dash, I'm surprised. Surprised that I didn't even need to talk to you, to get three stories with two similar outcomes and one that was the complete opposite."

"W,w,what do you mean?" I stammered. Lancer glared at me unsettlingly.

"I spoke with Barry. He told me that an arguement in the hallway resulted in Daniel Fenton tripping when he was coming to hit you and he hit his head on the ground. When I spoke with Michael, the story was pretty much the same. The only different thing about his story was the ending. He said Mr. Fenton and you got into an arguement and you pushed him backwards, but then Fenton fell back and hit his head on the side of a locker on his way down. Not looking too good for you so far, Mr. Baxter." I gulped again nervously. "And Kwan, his story was completely the opposite of what the other two had stated. A totally ludacris statement! He claimed that Fenton was like that when you four got there."

"He, he was!" I said hesitantly. "Kwan's telling the truth!"

Lancer scowled at me with disbelief. "Then, why would Barry and Michael be telling me the opposite?"

Instantly, I froze up again. A fear reflex I have is to just freeze up. Lancer knew that Kwan was lying. But the thing that hurt me the most was knowing that my two friends, my so called friends Barry and Mike had totally ratted me out! I was in shock. Betrayed. Lancer just kept on glaring at me like I was in serious trouble, which at this point wasn't too far from the truth. I was done for. He must of figured out everything by piecing everything together, and now because of Barry and Mike, the Ravens were as good as done in the championships and I was done for too!

"Mr. Baxter, Danny Fenton's in a very bad state right now." Lancer sighed. "I know that either way, you did something to Danny or caused him to do something that has now left him unconscious and completely unresponsive. Do you realize what you have done? Do you know what the severity of this situation intails?" Suddenly, I outbursted.

"I didn't do anything!" I shouted aggressively. Lancer kept his eyes on me and lowered his face to me, looking up at my face which just reeked with guilt.

"Then who did, Mr. Baxter?" Lancer scowled. "Regardless of what you say, I know that you were the one who did this, just thanks to those idiot friends of yours. The person in the ambulance said that the blow to Daniel's head looked like it was trauma created from a physical attack. Either a blunt object or a human fist could have knocked him out. Why I'm suspecting you though Dash is because of something in one story that standed out. Michael claimed that you were the supposed aggressor who pushed Danny over. But, that wasn't a push, was it?"

I couldn't do anything to respond, but blink. Lancer muttered.

"I know that this is going to sound incredibly hard for you to believe Dash. But you should realize that jocks will tell you anything to stay in sports. They turned on you like a pack of unfed dogs. And now, they're free to go. You on the other hand, should be worrying."

I was shaking with fear. "Why?"

"This was a serious assault on your part." He said sternly. "The only measures that can be taken to deal with this are much more, serious than you would of course be forced to deal with here at school. I'm afraid that the police are on there way here to speak with you. And your parents, they'll have to come to a meeting between me and our principal sometime today to discuss your fate. I know we won't be able to keep you in Casper." I felt my guilt suddenly lash out of me.

"What?! I'm being expelled?!" I shouted. Lancer turned away from me.

"I'm afraid that is a possibility." He said mournfully. "And I'm afraid that you're in for a lot more than just being expelled, Mr. Baxter." He took a deep breath.

"I think this, will be the least of your worries."

**And that is the end of Chapter 5. I know, you were probably thinking that Barry was the one who was going to rat out Dash. But in reality it was the other idiot who did. Now that Lancer has figured out what's happened, what's going to happen to Dash? Or Danny for that matter, whose condition is still undetermined? Please Read and Review! Chapter 6 will be up sooner or later, but sooner than never. :)**


	6. Chapter 6: The Meeting

Chapter 6: A Painful Explanation

Dash's POV

12:32 hours

Word had gotten out around the school that I was in some serious trouble. My phone kept ringing nonstop while Lancer kept me in his office. The police were already on school grounds, but my parents hadn't showed up yet for the meeting to take place to decide what was about to happen to me. Every text that popped up on my phone was the same sentence over and over again. "What happened?"

The truth was, I really didn't know.

Lancer had left me alone in the room and locked the door. Outside of the door, people were gathered looking through the window at me. I turned around to see who was standing there. But out of all the faces who were peeking in to see what was going on, none of them looked like any of my friends. They were all, nerds. Geeks. Outcasts. Freaks. I could hear them talking through the thick door, but I didn't want to know what they were saying. The mutters I could make out from outside sounded with threatening tones. I turned my head slightly to look at them again, but this time all I could hear through the door was a loud moan.

"BOOOOO!"

I felt my heart lower itself as I turned back to face Lancer's desk. I wanted to get up and tell them to "Beat it!", but I felt that I'd start another riot. Keeping my mouth shut was probably the best thing to do for now. At least, until I figured out what my fate was about to unfold. Expulsion, was the only word I was thinking about. My Casper High career, was about to die right in front of me because of one stupid mistake! One thing I was pushed into! Because of my friends. My so called, Bros. They, betrayed me. I was still shocked that they seriously just put themselves over me, their friend. Kwan tried to help, but the other two completely botched me! Next time I run into them, I guaranteed myself that I was going to teach them a lesson. But one thing was defintely certain about this. I was done with those back stabbing jerks. Permanently.

I sighed and turned back to my phone to take my mind off of my problems, but the texts that came up were only making my situation feel worse.

"Where are you?", "What's going on?", "Are you okay?"

Those were about all that was coming up in my inbox. Kwan was the only one of my so called 'bros', who was decent enough to text me to find out what was going on. I told him about my possible expulsion, and it resulted in a lash out of chain messages from people. I'm guessing he read the text outloud, as usual. But it caused the messages to shift from worried sounding, to straight up disguisted.

"Why would you do that?", "Is Danny okay?"

The public was starting to learn the truth and now everyone was becoming extremely upset. I was starting to get annoyed with everyone's opinionated responses, so I shut off my phone. The people standing behind me at the door eventually all took off, and after about an hour of waiting in my chair, I was finally alone. I'm usually surrounded by attention. So, why did I suddenly just want to be left alone? I didn't know then. All I knew then was that I was in trouble beyond repair. And now, their was no way to turn back.

Lancer returned soon after all the kids had fled from his doorway with Principal Ishiyama at his hip. She holding a stack of papers, folders, stuff like that. I turned around frantically as he walked in, feeling my heart racing anxiously to figure out what was about to go down. Behind Lancer and Ishiyama, two cops walked in. But the thing that hurt more than having to talk to the police, was talking to the next people who followed through the door after them.

My folks.

Lancer smirked at me as he walked towards me. "I'm surprised you followed my orders to stay put, Mr. Baxter. Usually, you would have just left a long time ago. I guess there's no point in leaving when you have no reason to. Your friends and all..."

"Are a pack of lying creeps..." I growled. As I spoke out with my frustration, my parents sat next to me to my left and right. My mom looked completely hysterical as she sat next to me and hugged me. My Dad looked at me with a stern glare as he took his seat, causing me to think that maybe this meeting was about to completely destroy me, which I already knew it was. Mrs. Ishiyama sat down in Lancer's chair while Lancer stayed standing with the two officers standing on each side of him. Ishiyama pulled a piece of paper from out of her pocket, which was folded in half, and placed it in front of her.

"Mr. Baxter, you have a lot of explaining to do." She said uneasily as she sat. I felt my stomach seize up, anxiousness at full tilt to figure out what was about to happen to me. Today, my life was about to change completely out of my own control. And I had no way of stopping it. My mom looked at Ishiyama with a worried look.

"Is my son going to be alright?" She asked with panic. "What happened?"

Lancer crossed his arms and sighed unreluctently. "A major fight on school property between the hours of 9 and 9:30 this morning resulted in an ambulance having to be called to take away a student, who had suffered from a serious injury to the head, rendering him unconscious. The only witnesses to the violent assault other than the victims friends were your son and the football players. But after listening to the football players, we have learnt some rather hard to hear information about this attack." He paused for a second to take a deep breath, which made me feel nauseous and unprepared to hear what he had to tell my parents. My mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour, knowing that their reactions were not going to be pretty once they found out about all of this. I sat limply in my chair, feeling hopeless as Lancer blinked suspensefully at me.

He continued. "We have learnt from confessions from other witnesses that your son is the number one suspect in this attack. According to the other students, Dash was the one who assaulted the victim, who is now at Amity Park General Hospital in an undetermined state." Instantly, both of my parents lunged forward in their chairs with disbelief.

"WHAT?!" They shouted in unison. My mom's eyes were as big as saucers as she glanced back at me, mortified.

"Please tell me that this is a joke, Mr. Lancer!" She said, sounding terrified like I was the victim of the incident or something. My Dad looked at me with shock as I just stared at Lancer with a mournful feeling in my gut, keeping my eyes glued to him. This was it. The guilt inside of me that weighed me down had completely froze me to my seat. I couldn't move, and I could hardly breathe. The guilt felt like it was constricting my body like a snake, and it felt like it was slowly crushing me to death. My Dad kept his eyes on me, still with a shocked expression.

"Tell me that's not true, son." He muttered with hope that I'd say something. But, I couldn't say a word. Mrs. Ishiyama looked at me for a split second before she gazed at my Dad, sliding the piece of paper across the desk towards him.

"Mr. Baxter, you do understand what kind of punishment is the only one suitable for this type of violent affair." She said sternly as she offered my father the paper. I couldn't see through the document using the light above Lancer's desk, but I could take a good guess on what that paper was. My Dad picked up the sheet and opened it, only to open his eyes widely with disbelief at the paper's title.

"My son, is expelled? Are you kidding me?!" He boasted, causing my mom to reach and grab the paper from his hands. Mrs. Ishiyama sighed sadly at my Dad's remark, while I felt those words dig right in. I was expelled. Torn. Booted out of Casper High, the school that my father graduated from and always praised about. The school that I've come to see as a second home for me. Now in just one sentence, it was gone.

"Now, hang on a second, Mrs. Ishiyama!" My Dad shouted aggressively. "My son is a star athlete! Not some, bully!"

"That's not what his record states, Mr. Baxter" Lancer scowled, picking up a folder from the stack of papers which was about as thick as a brick. "In the past year since he started the first semester, Dash has been in two fights, three food fights and he's usually the main reason for us teachers finding students shoved and locked inside of their lockers throughout the school." As Lancer read out my mistakes from the past, I felt the guilt weigh me down even more. The guilt was just going to keep on crushing me until their was nothing left of me. My mom looked at me uneasily.

"Dash, why haven't you ever told us any of those things before?" She asked me, but I once again couldn't say another word. "We hear all about your athletic successes, but I guess that your stories have been missing some of the details!" Her face turned cold looking a she turned back to face Lancer and Ishiyama. The face she gave me was one that I would never forget. It was a cold glare that showed her disappointment with me, but it also showed that she had just lost all available trust in me.

Lancer sighed. "I'm afraid that your son hasn't been entirely honest with you folks. I'm afraid that Dash's punishment from Casper will merely be expulsion, but the actual punishment that your son will have to face will be under the duristiction of the Amity Park Police Department. The Fenton Family told me over the phone that they would like to press charges against your son." Mom's jaw instantly dropped.

"No..." My Mom said, unable to take what was just explained. Suddenly, my Mom burst into tears. Inside of me, my emotions were about to explode. I wanted to scream, cry, yell, go into a tantrum. Fenton's parents, wanted to press charges?! My life was bad enough already today! Now behind the betrayal, the fight, the lies, I was about to be charged?! I had to let it all out. And then, I just exploded.

"No! Please, no!" I screamed. "No, no, no, no!" My outburst instantly caused the room to jump. Then, I couldn't see how childish this really looked, but looking at my father's eyes, he rolled them flusteredly at my immature response. My mom grabbed my arm as I just freaked out. Mr. Lancer lowered his expression at me sympathetically.

"I'm sorry Dash." He said with a monotone voice. "I'm afraid this is how it goes. Danny Fenton is still in an undetermined condition. He is still unconscious. The doctors say that he may be listed in serious, or critical condition..."

"C,c,critcal condition?!" My Mom butted in, still struck with disbelief that this was happening to her son. "The kid that Dash was fighting with, is in critical condition? Why?!" Mrs. Ishiyama grabbed another sheet of paper from the stack of documents that was now currently sitting in front of her. My heart was still racing from my outburst, and all I could think about was screaming more and more. I wanted to get out of there. Guilt had crushed me until I cried. But even on the edge of breaking down, I couldn't produce a tear.

Ishiyama sighed. "The blow that knocked out Mr. Fenton was a direct hit straight to the temple. That is a very dangerous hit point on the body that can result in either serious injury, or death. We have no choice to expel Dashniel, and Jack Fenton, Danny's father who Mr. Lancer had spoken to on the phone, said that he wanted to press charges on Dash for what happened to his son."

"Isn't there anyway we can fight this?" My Dad asked as the two police officers walked over to stand behind me. One of the officers cracked his wrists behind my head, sending a chill up the back of my neck. Suddenly, my blood felt like it was cold as ice, causing me to shudder distastefully.

"I would probably invest in hiring a good lawyer." He said sternly. My mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly with both of hers.

"But, isn't their anyway we can help get our son back into the school, Mr. Lancer?" My Mom asked. Lancer shook his head.

"I'm afraid not, Mam'." He sighed. "Dash has commited a crime on school property. Assault. We cannot allow a student of his caliber to continue his education here due to the severity of this attack."

"Actually Mr. Lancer, he did not commit the act of assault." The officer to the left of my back muttered. "The charge here would be classified as battery, the act of actual physical harm to a human being. Assault is much different."

I felt my heart racing faster as the cop stopped talking. Suddenly, the two officers grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me to standing upright. The explanatory cop grabbed my wrists and placed my hands behind my back. In self defense, Iunged my hands out of his grip, only for him to grab my wrists again.

"What are you doing?!" I shouted as the officer grabbed me again. The second cop gave my folks a cold stare.

"We have no choice but to take Dashniel into custody back at our headquarters for further investigation." He scowled. "To determine further charges, we'll need for him to speak with investigators about what happened so we can figure out the situation." The officer holding my wrists gripped tightly on them so I wouldn't escape a second time. As his grip tightened, I felt a shockwave of fear move across my body.

"We're placing you under arrest, Mr. Baxter." He said coldly. "On the charges of battery and possibly, human endangerment offenses to be determined at a later date. Now, stop resisting!"

"No!"

I lunged out of his grip once again, only to have the second officer grab my arms and push me against the wall next to my mom's chair. As I struggled, I felt a metal object touch my right wrist and clamp itself onto it like a bracelet. A handcuff, which connected by a chain, constricted my movement and kept both of my hands behind my back as the officer quickly latched my other hand into its clasp. My mom stood up with a horrified expression on her face, while my father tried to hold her back in case she did something stupid that would wind up getting her arrested too. As the officer pulled me from the wall, Mr. Lancer gave the officers a questionable look.

"Why are you apprehending him?" He asked. "Dash would have gone peacefully with you if you'd of just asked him."

The holding officer behind me growled. "He's a big boy, Lancer. Muscly athletic kid like this could do a lot of damage if he wasn't detained. He runs away from us, and we won't be able to catch him. Plus, if his hands did what they did to Mr. Fenton, then I wouldn't want to be in his path if he snaps. You know, if he's the suspect."

"Let go of me!" I grunted, but the cop tightened his grip on my wrists. My mom struggled to get out of my dad's grip, but she was unable to break free to help me. She continued to fight, trying to break out.

"Please, you can't do this!" She shrieked. "Dash is a harmless boy! He would never hurt a fly unless it got in the way of him passing a football! He's innocent!" My Dad groaned as he held her back.

"Officer, please don't take him to jail." He pleaded. "Dash, you didn't do any of this, did you? Please! Just, tell me the truth!"

I turned back to face my Dad, feeling a tear roll out of my eye as I looked back at him. Guilt had finally allowed me to produce a single tear, but it felt cold as it dripped down my face.

_"...This is the truth."_

**Please Read and Review! Also, I would like to thank "Hellbreaker", who corrected me on the charge in question in previous chapters. :) It's greatly appreciated. Battery, not assault. Thanks! :D**

**SilverRaven16**


	7. Chapter 7: The Reality Settles In

Chapter 7: The Reality Settles In

15:00 hours

Dash's POV

"Get in the car, now!"

I felt my forehead bang the top of the door of the cruiser as the two officer forced me inside. The cops closed the door behind me as my parents stormed from the school and followed them closely to see what was about to happen to me. The walk from Lancer's office to the parking lot was slient, but nerve racking. People across the halls stared menacingly at me as the two cops dragged me outside, holding me by my handcuffed wrists. But one of the faces I would never forget was the face of the girl who started this all. The girl I fought Fenton for to gain her affections. All she did was turn away coldly as I walked past, as if I was nothing but garbage to her. As if I meant nothing.

It didn't take me long after the officers threw me in the back of the car for my brain to register that I wasn't going anywhere soon. I tried to grab the door handle using my cuffed hands which dangled behind my back, only to see that the cops were a lot smarter than I thought. The doors were child locked from the inside. Only meaning one thing. No escape.

I sighed defeated, sitting myself properly in the cab so my head could lean against the barred window of the car. Outside, my folks were talking to the two officers while Mr. Lancer and Mrs. Ishiyama spoke with another officer who had arrived in the parking lot.

"He's going to have to come with us, but he will be released on conditions." I heard the first cop blabber through the glass. "He will not be allowed to contact, be near or see Danny Fenton or his friends."

"He will also not be allowed to come back onto Casper High Property." The other officer ensured. "For safety concerns, he will not be allowed to come near Casper High or Nasty Burger, the high school hangout, until further notice." I groaned miserably.

Hearing the words of the Nasty Burger made my stomach turn slightly with hunger. I hadn't eaten lunch, and now school was almost over. This was the first time since this morning that I was focusing on what I was seriously thinking about. I was hungry. Stressing out. Tired. And I knew I was also feeling slightly alone, now that I knew nobody wanted to talk to me because they knew I was in serious trouble. I let a tear fall down my face as I watched my parents walk and head towards my father's truck a few parking stalls away. As they walked off, the two cops walked towards the cruiser and opened my door as I lifted my head from the window.

"You doing alright in here, kid?" One of them said. I was too focused on the passenger seat in front of me to pay attention to exactly which cop was yapping to me.

"I'm fine..." I growled, keepng my eyes forward.

"You understand your rights, Mr. Baxter?" The other officer asked. I blinked without looking at him. The officers stayed quiet for a few seconds like they were waiting for some kind of answer, quickly realizing I wasn't about to say a damn thing. Once they understood my silence, the cop who was trying to talk to me pulled out some kind of notepad from his shirt pocket. He kept his eyes on me, but I refused to look at him.

"I said, do you understand your rights here?" He asked me again. "You know, your basic rights while being detained in police custody?" To his question, I shook my head lightly. The cop put the notepad back in his pocket closed the door slightly as if he was telling me that our conversation was over. He sighed.

"You have the right to remain silent." He continued. "Everything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney..."

"You think I haven't heard that speech before, dude?" I asked him aggressively, instantly shutting him up. "I watch 'Cops', I've heard the rights speech before. You don't have to repeat something every human being has heard a hundred times..." The cop groaned at my statement, rolling his eyes impatiently at my attitude towards him.

"It's my duty to inform you of your basic rights, Mr. Baxter." He grunted distastefully. "It's my job to tell you the speech whether you've heard it a hundred times or not." I growled back at his answer.

"Just shut up and drive me out of here..." I scowled. "I'm sick of this stalling. You want answers? Then, get me out of this place before I seriously start freaking out. I don't want to be here. Let's just go already..."

"You're getting restless." The cop warned. I rolled my eyes at him, feeling my crying feeling suddenly come back. Feeling like I just was making the situation worse, I looked away, muttering four words that left me silent for the rest of the hour.

"Just leave me alone..."

Without hesitating, the two cops hopped into the car. As the wheels started rolling, my tears started rolling too, down my face in an explosion of emotions. We pulled out of the parking lot, and all I could feel was like I was going to explode into a freakout frenzy. The cop in the passenger seat looked back to check on me with a smirk on his face.

"You crying boy?" He asked me with a snicker. I turned away from him and bit my tongue to avoid saying anything, but he continued to taunt me. "Not so tough now are you? Think you can lip off a cop? Well, it doesn't matter what you do. You're in a hell of a lot more trouble then you think."

"When we get back to the precinct, you're gonna like the little interogation room." The driver said sternly. "It's a lot more comfortable than the cell you'll wind up in if that kid you beat up isn't okay. I feel sorry for your mom, kid. She was bawling over you." Their words made me feel even worse than I already was, but I guess that was their intention. I continued to stay quiet, but the duo kept talking to me.

"You know why we're taking you down to the precinct, kid?" The passenger asked. I shook my head, not wanting him to ask me again. After rummaging through the console of the vehicle, the officer pulled out a small stack of papers and faced me again.

"Well, we need to take you alone to the precinct to get some answers out of you. You're the only suspect we've got."

I kept my eyes glued to the barred window to avoid conflict with the officers, biting down on my tongue hard to both shut me up and make me feel unnumb. My body felt completely asleep. Absolutely stiff. The only thing that was making me feel anything was my mind, which wanted to cry some more. I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Dash Baxter wasn't about to prove himself as some cry baby, even though I was now in so much trouble my eyes were probably turning brown. Knowing that I was about to be charged with attacking somebody, I didn't want my charges to become more than they already were. I didn't even know what the heck Battery was, and now, I was being charged with it. I slumped in my seat, keeping my tongue pressed down by my teeth so I couldn't be tempted to argue. But, it didn't help.

"You guys gave me the right to be silent..." I muttered as the passanger officer turned back to face the front window. "I don't want you to talk to me. I know I'm in trouble enough as it is, so maybe you should just let me sit in silence for a while. I'm not in the mood to talk."

"Well, you should get in the mood for talking, kid." He growled back at me. "When you're in interrogation, you won't exactly be getting away with the silent treatment."

"You might as well figure out some kind of sob story to tell the interrogator." The driver teased as we turned left past the Nasty Burger. "You defintely don't look like the typical juvy we bring in for a crime like this. You're a pretty boy. The boys in the blue room are gonna "love" you." I glared at the driver menacingly through the rearview mirror as the passenger cop suddenly cracked a laugh at his comment..

"And what's that supposed to mean?" I scowled, feeling slightly offended by his statement. The driver sneered at me.

"You'll see when we get there." He said cunningly, slightly increasing acceleration as we turned onto Main Street. "But I'd advise you drop the little tough guy act before we do. You know, so the other inmates don't have to laugh when we pull you in there."

"Oh mommy, no, no, no!" The passanger cop teased, referring to my freak out from earlier which instantly gave me a irritated tick in my neck which quickly went away. "Please don't take me to jail! I need my mama! I'm a big scary boy, but I'm sure act like a little girl when I'm in trouble! Oh no!"

As the officers lightly chuckled at me in the front seat, I felt a worriesome feeling build up in my stomach. Now, the feeling of crying had subsided, and my mood was shifting back to what was going to happen to me. Before I could do any serious thinking about myself and my problems, we pulled into the parking lot of Amity Park's Police Station. Parking in a parkade connected to the back of the station, the car came to a complete stop just a few feet shy from the actual door that lead to the precinct from the parking garage. I was dragged out of the backseat and pulled by the two officers to my feet. The driver cop had his hand gripped tightly on my collar, while the other grabbed me by my wrists, escorting me through the doors like some kind of animal on a leash who needed to be constrained. Suddenly as we walked through the entrance, the officer holding me back by my collar heard a fuzzing coming from his belt coming from his radio.

"Officer Muriel, come in." The device said with a fuzz. Keeping his hand on my collar, the cop grabbed the little hand held device and responded.

"I'm here. What's going on?" He asked the person on the other end suspisiously. The rest of the radio conversation was pretty much fuzz and mutters from how I was listening to it. After about a minute of talking, Officer Muriel looked at his partner holding my wrists with a weird smirk on his face.

Well Dashniel, I guess today's your lucky day!" He said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, suddenly roughing up my collar by pulling it back and forth excitedly. "Looks like Mr. Big Boy's not gonna be going to the blue room to entertain the other inmates with his cocky little mouth. You've been asked to go straight to the interrogation room. Aren't you just so lucky?" I glared at him as he continued to make fun of me.

"I thought cops were supposed to have some kind of curtacy?" I asked him, only to get a light chuckle back from him.

"You should go into standup comedy, kid." He smirked. "Come on, let's get you to your little meeting. You're gonna really hate having to talk to your interrogating officer. Constable Stevenson."

I muttered. "Why? What's so bad about him?" The two cops looked at each other and their faces turned neutral.

"You'll figure it out when we get there." Muriel said uneasily, pulling me towards a set of stairs which led me to a door on the second floor of the cop shop.

I walked into the white walled room where two chairs were placed next to some sort of desk. Officer Muriel sat me down on the chair farthest from the door, finally taking off my cuffs as I took my seat. I raised my hands in front of me, feeling better that I was now able to see them and the tension on my wrists from the cuffs had finally been taken away. As the feeling of being held captive by the handcuffs quickly subsided, I noticed another feeling come back to me again. Not anger. Not happiness.

Once again, I felt scared for my life.

In front of me, all I could do was look as Officer Muriel and the other idiot walked out of the room and closed the door behind them. The blank, wood door was the only thing other than the blue chair I was sitting on and the grey table my arms were rested on that brought any kind of colour to the dull, white room. I glued my eyes to it in an attempt to zone myself out, but instead, my eyes quickly became glued to the passing of shadows which casted underneath the door as people in the building walked past. After a few minutes of watching shadows, I noticed one stop right in front of my door and twist the door handle. A tall, blonde, and jacked looking cop walked in, sitting on the chair which sat on the opposite side of the table with a stern look on his face.

"So, you must be Dashniel Baxter I assume?" He said firmly. "I just heard from Officer Muriel that you already admitted to the crime at hand. You told them at the school when you were talking to your father that you assaulted Daniel Fenton this morning when they arrested you." At that instant, I gave him a somewhat hopeless stare, followed by a very mutual response.

"...Yeah."

"Well, what's the point of me interrogating you?" The cop sneered. "My name's Constable Bryan Stevenson, by the way. You and I are going to become very well acquainted. I am the investigating officer who has been assigned to your case."

"Why am I here then if you don't have to interrogate me?" I asked uneasily to the Constable, who sat there half heartedly as if he had better things to do than to talk to some kid like me. Stevenson placed his two hands on the table in front of him, giving me a questionable glance and a weird expression. He took a deep breath and let out a large sigh before speaking again.

"I'm here to ask you three things, Dashniel." He muttered. "Why, who and where. Why did you do it, who did this specifically and where was this done? Are you just taking the wrap for somebody else, or were you the real culprit sort of ordeal. And I'm just gonna warn you, I don't play the whole "good cop" game with people. I stick straight to the point."

"So I've heard..." I muttered, feeling that awkward feeling in my gut return again. Now not only did I feel somewhat terrified again, I also was feeling sick to the point of puking. The Constable's presence made me feel uneasy, and talking to him was making the problem worse.

"Let's start with the first question." He began, crossing his arms at me menacingly to get me to speak. "Who was the person who really did this to Daniel Fenton? Was it really you, or are you taking the wrap for another one of your goofball friends?" As he finished his question, I realized what he was trying to say. He probably has heard the story about what happened, and yet was he giving me some kind of opportunity to change the story around? Could I make myself innocent again, and change my life around for the better? Could I make things normal again? I sighed and looked into Constable Stevenson's eyes.

"I'm innocent." I muttered. Stevenson looked at me with a confused look on his mug.

"What did you just say?" He asked. "You sound like you're talking like a mouse or something. Speak up!"

"I'm innocent." I said again, this time a little more clearly. The Constable rolled his eyes at me stubbornly, causing my defenses to go right back up cautiously in case I was about to get yelled at or something.

"Don't lie to me, kid." He growled. "You think I can't read the guilty expression on your little jock face right now? You're as guilty as a thief getting caught with his hand in the tip jar at a restaurant. You beat that kid up, didn't you?" I swallowed quietly to avoid him hearing any nervous sounds from me.

"No, I didn't. I swear!" I said calmly, but he once again wasn't buying my lies. He glared at me sickly, causing my stomach to turn. Today my stomach was turning so frequently it felt like it was rolling of my abdomen. He shook his head disappointedly at me, reminding me of what Lancer was doing earlier too when he was talking to me about all of this.

"You can't hide the truth from me, I know what you did." He said sternly. "Everyone at the scene says that you were either involved or the reason Mr. Fenton is now in a hospital bed. And guess what, Dashniel? He still hasn't waken up yet! He's possibly going to be listed in a coma if he doesn't wake up soon, all because of you. Are you happy with yourself? Either he wakes up, or goes into a coma and dies. All because of you." Suddenly, my mind began to fill with anxiety. A rush of realization instantly shot to my brain, causing me to think about his words more clearly.

Fenton still hadn't waken up yet? I thought he'd at least be up by now. He was still unconscious from the hit? The attack? My rage? He's in critical condition because he still hasn't waken up? It's been over six hours, damn it! Why wouldn't he wake up? I may not be able to stand Fenton, but seriously. Why wasn't he waking up? Now, hearing that made me suddenly really realize what I'd done. Before, it was blocked by crying and numbness, but now it felt clear. I, I hurt somebody. I hurt somebody, pretty badly. Now because of me, he was fighting for his life in hospital while I just sat being punished for a mistake I never meant to actually create. This was my fault. He was suffering because of me! I felt my mind tune back into reality in a few seconds after he'd finished speaking, but suddenly, the real reality clicked.

"I, I'm, I'm the reason he's like that?!" I stuttered, terrified. Constable Stevenson looked at me with a raised glance of his eyes, realizing that he'd just caused me to crack.

"So, you admit it. You did attack Danny?" He asked me. I nodded at him uneasily. Stevenson lowered his glance back to a normal stare and pulled out a notepad from his pocket. I didn't see why he needed it, considering there was a camera right above his head that was pointed right at me. I was too anxious to care at the moment though, feeling my mind just spiralling uncontrollably.

"Why did you attack Mr. Fenton?" Stevenson pondered as I stared blankly at him. "Can you give me any specific reason whatsoever about why you did it?" I looked at him empty, feeling I no longer had anything to lose. I felt like my body was just dead from all the tension and anxiety and it didn't want to move. "Well, do you have an explanation?" I looked at him blankly.

"I, I don't know..." I muttered sadly, feeling a tear produce at the corner of my eye. "I just don't know anymore. It's all a blur.."

"Is that all you have to say?" He asked me again, which I nodded my head as my only response. "You can't tell me anymore?"

"I can't say anything else without incriminating myself." I sobbed, suddenly going into a crying frenzy again. The officer looked at me sympathetically, but he quickly shook it off.

"You've already incriminated yourself, kid." He sighed. "You only needed to answer one of those three questions for me to have to place you in custody. I know it happened in Casper High, you won't tell me why, but you told me that you did it. That's all I needed from you."

"What's your point?" I asked with a quiet sob. Constable Stevenson stood up and walked towards the door, placing his hand onto the door handle so he could leave the room. Before exiting, he sighed again.

"Seeing Daniel Fenton's background Dashniel," He began. "You just messed with a family of very connected individuals. They have friends in high places that you've never even heard of who could make this case a lot harder than it needs to be." I looked at him hopelessly.

"Are you saying I'm pretty much screwed here?" I asked snivelling. The cop opened the door and walked out, looking back at me sternly.

_"Let's just say, your chances of being set free anytime soon are pretty much gone."_

**Holy, that was a long chapter. This chapter took me four days to write. I'm sorry for the delays if their was any, but at least I got it done. The next chapter will be up sooner or later, so just keep posted for new updates. :)**


	8. Chapter 8: The Inevidable (Part 1)

Chapter 8: The Inevidable (Part 1)

16:35 hours

Dash's POV

"Let me out of here! Let me out, please!"

After the interrogation, Constable Stevenson was ordered to place me into immediate custody, throwing my butt into a steel cell within the precinct until my parents showed up to speak with him. I was left with all of my material possessions, considering that Stevenson even told me that I would be too stupid to harm myself with anything I had on my, which was just my cell phone and an eraser from yesterday's math class. Unable to do anything other than yelling, I pounded on the walls of the cell like an animal, hoping somebody with a heart would let me out of the steel box of bars and iron that kept me from leaving on my own terms. All the cops did who looked into my cell was smile vividly and walk away as I screamed for my freedom, knowing that I wasn't about to go anywhere. Coldhearted bastards. One officer heard my screams and stopped at the door of my cell, but it was only to tell me to keep it down. I looked at the officer harshly, still having tears in my eyes from the interrogation which ran down my face.

"Doesn't anybody here have any kind of sympathy?" I asked him hysterically. The cop rolled his eyes at me and turned to continue his walk, but not before saying these words I would never forget.

"Why would anybody have any sympathy for you? You sure didn't show any kind of sympathy when you were pounding on that poor kid, now did you?"

I felt my heart sink low into the heels of my feet. She was right. Stupid friends! Stupid Fenton! Stupid fight that landed me in more crap than a manure field! Innocent this morning, now as guilt as they come for landing Danny Fenton into a hospital bed. I never meant to take it that far, I saw it at that moment more than ever. I didn't mean for Fenton to wind up in this position. Sure, I wanted to rough him up for jeopardizing me and Paulina's friendship and our relationship by asking her out and trying to be her so-called friend, but I didn't mean to, cripple him. I wasn't angry at Danny as much as I was when the fighting happened, but I could still feel a small bubble of vengefulness in the pit of my stomach. I was angry because of the Paulina stuff, and I was even more angry that my attempts to get even with him landed me in a barred hell hole. I wouldn't be here if he would learn to stay in his own life and learn not to interfere with mine. I would still be hanging out at school if my stupid friends didn't totally rat me out. The thoughts of what I would and wouldn't be doing started to overrun my already jumbled thoughts. Before my mind could go into some kind of haze trying to piece together everything that's happened just in the few hours I've been in this mess, I was interupted by the sound of footsteps at my cell door. I looked at the door, hopeful that somebody was about to let me go free. Unfortunately, my hopes of escaping quickly faded as Constable Stevenson walked into my cell with an uneasy look on his face. I stood up.

"Now what is it?" I asked impatiently. "You gonna read out my charges to me now? I already know I'm about to be charged with battery! You don't have to use any theatrics. I know..."

"Dash, I need to talk to you." Stevenson said, kind of sadly. I looked at him with a questionable glance, keeping my attention on his eyes which looked worrisome. I gulped nervously.

"What's the matter? Now what's going on?" I stammered, trying to keep myself together to prepare myself for what he was about to tell me. Were my parents not going to bail me out of this mess? Was I going to be sent to a federal penitentiary for what happened? My mind began to spiral as the Constable took a deep breath and sighed.

"I'm afraid I have some, really bad news." He sighed with a mournful demenor. "It's, it's about Daniel." Hearing Fenton's name made my blood run cold.

"Yeah, what about him?" I asked uneasily as I felt my knees start to shake beneath me. Stevenson looked at me and shook his head with disappointment.

Stevenson muttered sadly. "He was a fighter, but he wasn't strong enough to pull it off. It took about seven hours of fighting, trying to keep himself together after that devestating blow to the head that could kill a person instantly. He was a tough kid..." I looked at Stevenson hopelessly, feeling my eyes widen with disbelief as I listened to what he was trying to tell me.

"What are you trying to say?" I stuttered, feeling my body suddenly become heavier with regret which quickly hit me like a bullet.

"I'm sorry Dash..." Stevenson said with a monotone strictness in his voice. "Daniel won't be coming back to school. He won't even be opening his eyes tomorrow morning. He was a fighter until the end, but he couldn't overcome his head trauma. He was diagnosed into a coma when he arrived at the hospital. Since then, he has," Suddenly, Constable Stevenson took another uncomfortable breath of air, making the suspense that now sat in the air unbearable. I stood, waiting for whatever he had to say to just hit me. After a few moments of silence, he continued.

"I'm afraid Daniel has finally succumb to his injuries." He muttered sadly. "Approximately twenty minutes ago, Daniel passed away in hospital due to the severe head trauma. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but he has been officially declared dead."

...Instantly, I froze up.

I couldn't speak. My mind finally shut itself up from all of the listless drama from before and I felt absolutely in shock. My knees buckled beneath me, causing me to land on my knee caps with a loud bang. I felt like vomitting, but their was nowhere to, so I swallowed the feeling back. I fell forwards, letting my hands hold me up as the shock worsened its weight on me. I felt like my whole body was paralyzed. I sat there, unable to move or speak. I even felt unable to breathe. My life at that second shattered into a million pieces, unable to be repieced. The shock that hit me made me have to wait a few moments before the reality really kicked me hard.

I've, I've just taken away a human life. I, I killed somebody! One hit, and now he was gone.

Forever...

"Dash, are you alright?" I heard Constable Stevenson mutter from above me, but I couldn't move my tongue or my jaw to say anything back. He asked me again, and again, but I couldn't produce any sort of answer. Suddenly, the weights of regret, guilt and shock finally became too much to take. I fell onto my side, feeling my body start to shutter uncontrollably as if I was freezing cold. Constable Stevenson kneeled over me to help me, but I was in such bad of a shock that I couldn't stop shaking on my own. My blood ran cold, and now I was feeling it. My body was numb from my head to my feet, desperately trying to get warm by shivering without any avail.

"Dash, answer me damn it!" Stevenson shouted with worry. "Get up and say something!" Once again, I couldn't say a word. Stevenson reached for the walkie talkie on his vest, hoping to call for somebody to help me. I could slowly feel my breathing start to come back to me, but it was wheezy and raspy sounding.

"I think you're going into some kind of emotional shock." The Constable sighed as he pressed the button on his device. "Officer Smith, this is Constable Stevenson. I need a medic in Cell 1-29. Suspect's going into shock. Requesting assistance."

The only response I heard from the radio was a very quiet, "Copy that.", coming from the cop he was talking to. Still shaking, I could feel my eyes slowly begin to close uncontrollably as if my mind was about to totally fall asleep. Hearing about what I'd unintentionally caused to another human being felt like it was shutting my entire body down. I breathed a large breath of air, trying to help myself snap out of what was happening to me. My entire life, now devestated by what's happened was just too much for me to bare.

"Dash, respond!" Stevenson asked, placing his hand on my shoulder in an attempt to calm me down before medics arrived. Using the air from my inhale, I forced myself threw the numbness and the shock to say something before I could let myself black out. Unfortunately, I could only say one word.

_"Danny..."_

**And that's the very short Chapter 8. (Please don't flame me for this!) I know a lot of you wanted me to keep Dany alive. But don't worry, I have a plan that's gonna make both sides happy about what's just occured. Please, bare with me and continue reading! I promise I'll do something that's gonna make both live and die fans satisfied. :)**


	9. Chapter 9: The Inevidable (Part 2)

Chapter 9: The Inevidable (Part 2)

17:56 hours

Dash's POV

I woke up in a daze as a white light shined across my eyes. I had no idea what the heck just happened, and I completely forgot what the Constable had told me before I somehow wound up lying on my back beneath a shining lightbulb on what felt like some sort of bed. For a second, I thought I was dying or something. The light at the end of the tunnel sort of ordeal kind of crossed my mind as soon as I opened my eyes, but it quickly died off. My vision was blurry, slowly clearing up as I started to gain some of my senses back. I turned my head weakly to my right, instantly noticing the shape of somebody else sitting next to my bed. It appeared to be some kind of doctor or nurse, who sat patiently waiting for me to say something as I sturred awake.

"So, you've finally decided to come to, have you?" He asked me modestly. "You had us on our toes for a second, but we knew you'd be fine." I felt my mind begin to piece together my predicament. Doctor, bed, light. I seemed to be in some kind of hospital room or something. I sat myself up exhaustedly, feeling like I was just waking up for school. I gave the physician a tired stare, trying to figure out how I wound up there in the first place.

"W, what happened?" I said questionably. "How did I get in here?" The doctor's face began to become clearer as my tiredness began to wear off. Looking at a clipboard above my head, the doctor gave me a weird looking eyebrow raise, as if I'd just said the stupidest thing he's ever heard before.

"You mean, you don't remember?" He pondered. "You blacked out after having a massive panic attack. I've never seen such a, dramatic little reaction like that before. It was, strange."  
When I heard the words, panic attack, instantly the world started coming back to me. The panic attack was triggered by something horrific. The reason I'd hit the ground and passed out once again clouded my mind with a feeling of guilt and shock. Fenton's condition. His struggling, his fighting, his, death? No, it couldn't be true. I zoned out at the thought, feeling everything coming back to me in waves which just kept crashing, one after another.

"Fenton..." I muttered, looking at the doctor with a worried expression on my face, "W,where's Fenton? Is he still at the hospital? Is he okay?" Just as I'd finished asking the physician, who looked absolutely clueless to answer my questions, the door of my room opened, allowing Constable Stevenson in to see me. I remember him saying something to me before I'd blacked out completely, but I couldn't make out what it was before I just collapsed into unconsciousness. Stevenson had heard me talking to the doctor from outside the door, asking questions about Danny. He gave me a strict look as our eyes made contact upon his entrance.

"Dash, Danny was pronounced dead over an hour ago, don't you remember me having to explain that to you?" The Constable asked me suspisously. "How do you think you wound up in this room in the first place? This isn't some daydream you're having, kid. This is all real." I felt my heart sink once again down into my heels. The truth of what had happened to Danny hit me hard. I, I really did kill someone. This was no sick, twisted dream! This was reality! My life! The reason I'd blacked out, was because Danny died in hospital. I looked at Constable Stevenson, horrified as the truth dug deep into my mind.

"So, it really wasn't a dream?" I asked uneasily. "Danny's really dead?!" Before I could say anymore, tears quickly filled my eyes. I felt the heavy feelings and constricted pains of guilt, hate and lies all start to come back to me in one fowl swoop. Fenton was gone. I couldn't believe it. One fight for a girl's affections, and now somebody was dead because of it? Now, I felt horrible. This entire affair, this whole incident. I didn't mean to do this much damage. The Fenton's just lost their own son because of me! Jazz lost her baby brother! Sam and Tucker just lost their best friend! And now I may of just lost something too.

My freedom.

I bawled at the thought of it all. Constable Stevenson actually seemed somewhat sympathetic as he stood over me. The cop crossed his arms and sighed bluntly, sounding somewhat sorry of me, but also somewhat annoyed with me at the same time.

"Dashniel, stop your crying." He muttered sternly. "Your sobbing and whining's not going to bring him back. The sooner you accept what's happened, the better your situation is going to be." I didn't want to look at him. I responded, keeping my head buried in my hands.

"That's what you think..." I sobbed. "Now what's going to happen to me? Am I going to jail? What's going on?!"

"You just took a life away, and all you're thinking about is what your ass is going to be doing next?" The Constable growled. Before I could say another word, I began to cry again. I couldn't stop the emotions. Every single thought in my head was about myself. I knew I'd just killed a human being, somebody I knew very close to me. But I couldn't stop thinking selfishly. What's about to happen to ME? What am I going to do? Where's MY break? Damn it. At this time, I really regreted coming to.

"Pull it together, kid." Stevenson scowled. "All this crying isn't helping anybody. You need to man up and face the reality. Your little friend you put in the hospital, is no longer alive to tell us his side of the story. Unless you can somehow make yourself into the victim, you're going to be facing one hell of a predicament that not even I'm going to be able to help you out of." I looked at Stevenson again, feeling still like I was being held down by sorrow induced cinder blocks, but now I somewhat could feel the shock lessening their weight on me. Make myself the victim? Wouldn't that just make the situation worse for me? I mean, jail time was bad enough. But lying about the whole ordeal in general? That would be hard to listen to for the people who saw me hit Danny into the ground. Sam and Tucker would never forgive me for this. My friends? They'd label me as some kind of freak monster, either purposely or accidentally. The witnesses would break this whole case right on top of me. I felt no way out of this wreck. I wiped the tears from my eyes with a lost, blank expression on my face, staring at the officer who was impatiently pitying me numbly.

"How the heck could I make myself out to be some kind of sob story victim here?" I asked aggressively. "You've got my confession, a now dead victim and about ten witnesses who'd all testify against me in a heartbeat. I think I'm pretty much as screwed as I can get."

"Well, yes and no." The Constable pondered. "You obviously had a reason you did all of this. Don't you remember why you attacked Daniel Fenton in the first place? The reason you hit him?" I glared frustratedly at Constable Stevenson as he explained this to me, shooting him a nasty look as I tried to say more.

"I already told you my reason! What's the point of repeating the same answer?" I barked. "What's the point of having to reexplain this to you?"

"You admitted to hitting Daniel, but your reason for it wasn't exactly explained." He sighed. "You said you didn't know why you hit him when I talked to you earlier. Can you explain to me now what happened before the incident that resulted in this whole entire affair?" I sniffed quietly. I was still slightly weeping from the painful news of Danny's death, but I couldn't stop my sobbing. Their was no point in acting tough anymore in front of these officers. Constable Stevenson raised an eyebrow at me as I tried to recollect my thoughts of that morning.

For some strange reason everything still was jumbled and blurry. The whole fight was just a blackout. The only thing I could remember was Danny hitting the ground and my fist hurting afterwards, indicating that I'd just punched something really hard. After that, I can only remember being outside, watching Danny getting carried away on the stretcher with Kwan and Lancer at his side. Before that, the only thing I could remember was Barry and Mike telling me to knock the kid's lights out because of stuff that happened between him and Paulina. I stared blankly at the officer, wanting to explain my circumstances then but, I couldn't say anything. Stevenson rolled his eyes impatiently at me once again.

"Not gonna talk?" He asked. "Maybe a night in your cell will get you talking tomorrow morning. Stand up, kid. You're going back." My expression changed to a horrified demenor again. I didn't want to go back in that cell. Not again. No.

"What? You can't put me back there! Please!" I begged. The cop grabbed my left wrist, quickly snapping on one of the cuffs he had linked to his belt to me. Taking my other wrist, he snapped the other bracelet on and cranked it tight, handcuffing both of my hands in front of me. This time, I didn't even bother trying to escape being handcuffed. Their was no point in resisting. I felt willess to try and escape again like I did with the previous cops who apprehended me at Casper High. Before, I felt like I was being arrested for no reason. Now, I felt like I needed more chains than this to hold me down. I felt like a animal. A killer who needed restraint.

Officer Stevenson helped me off of the bed and stood me up, grabbing the chain between the two cuffs to pull me along like a dog back to my cell. He walked me down the hall back to Cell 1-29, and I felt my legs lock like a scared puppy just steps away from the entrance to a vet clinic. The Constable tugged me forcefully to my room, pushing me inside with a hard shove. I wobbled into the dark quarter, turning back to watch Stevenson close the door behind him with a smug look on his face.

"Maybe a night in solitary confinement will get you talking." He growled, slamming my door shut. I sighed uneasily as the door closed, feeling my crying start to return to me once again.

_This was going to be a long, sleepless night._

**And that's the second part of this chapter straight from the confines of my mind. The next chapter's gonna be fun to write, considering I already have an idea of how Dash's night is going to be like. Chapter 10 should be up soon, but I usually post once every one or two weeks, depending if I can get internet from one place or another. I'll try to keep to my posting schedule, but when I say try, I really mean hope. :)**

**SilverRaven 16**


	10. Chapter 10: Being Watched

Chapter 10: Being Watched

22:38 hours

Dash's POV

I had to curse myself, didn't I?

A few hours after being thrown into my cell, sleep was proven to be impossible. No matter how many times I rolled over, tossed and turned, I couldn't close my eyes for more than about five minutes without the events of the tragic day that had just happened suddenly flashing into my head. I tried throwing my head under my pillow as an attempt to try and and block out all light from gleaming across my eyes in my somewhat lit cell. Of course, this didn't work either to put myself to sleep. All it did was make me feel paranoid of my surroundings and of my thoughts.

I tried counting sheep, thinking, zoning out. Nothing was helping me sleep. I still couldn't believe that Fenton had died because of that fight. Looking back, I couldn't remember how hard I'd hit him. I just knew that the hit had made contact with his head. Right in the temple, a person's weak point. It was a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. Why did I have to hit right there? He'd be fine if I'd of just smoked him right between the eyes. A punch then would have only either knocked him out, or it would have just dazed him. No, I had to hit him in the kill spot. I felt horrible about everything, about Fenton, about this whole affair.

I just, couldn't believe that one punch was enough to kill the kid.

"Ugh, stop it!" I groaned to myself, grabbing my head flusteredly. "I gotta stop thinking about all of this! These thoughts are going to drive me up the damn wall!" I sighed at my little attempt to shut my brain up by blabbering to myself. This was pathetic. I sounded like I was talking to another person, when really I was alone. If the guards heard me, they'd probably think I was schitzophrenic having some kind of conversation with myself. Going crazy. That's not the kind of impression I wanted to leave with the police, thinking that I was some crazy lunatic who deserved a rubber room by talking to some imaginary friend. I groaned again, laying down and shoving my face into my pillow which was about as comfortable as laying on a boulder.

I sat for about another hour in the darkness of my cell trying to find a way to close my eyes and sleep. Still, I just couldn't seem to stop all of the thinking about what happened, the contemplating of my next move, the hoping that somebody was going to bail me out soon. To get me out of this hell. This was torture being unable to relax and fall asleep like on any normal night. Why couldn't I sleep? Why?

"CREEEEEK..."

Suddenly, a noise filled my cell, causing me to get up out of bed terrified. I sat up in shock, feeling unable to breathe for a second as the noise quickly escaped my ears. The sound, it was coming from everywhere. In a second, it was gone, but it sounded like it came from all angles of the room. To me, it sounded like a rusty hinged door opening with a screech. I felt my heart rate pick up as I looked in all directions, somewhat scared out of mind. That noise came out of nowhere from absolute silence. Looking around as I gained back the ability to breathe again, I couldn't see anything in my cell that would have been able to make that noise happen. As I tried to detect where the source of sound had originated, I felt a cold breeze move past my face which caused a chill to race down my spine like a slimy rat through a sewer pipe. The wind, it made it possible for me to see the little breath that was coming out of my mouth in the room temperature jail cell in a mist like it would on a cold winter day. For some strange reason, you could still see a light mist of air even though the room was almost pitch black, causing me to feel uneasy with my surroundings.

"Who's there?!" I stuttered clenching my fists tightly with fear. I listened closely in the sudden silence that had recrept back into the room again. No noise. I could hear only myself breathing in the dark. I watched, somewhat trancefully as the mist from the cold air continued to escape my mouth with each breath. I found it somewhat of a calming sensation watching the mist appear and disappear. But of course, this feeling wouldn't last.

"BANG!"

I jumped right out of bed to that noise. I quickly began to panic. A loud, metal bang echoed through my ears, which sounded kind of like when a wrench hits the ground in a autobody shop. I felt my knees suddenly begin to shake uncontrollably, feeling scared to figure out where that noise might have come from this time.

I called out again. "Who's there?!"

Once again, I couldn't hear any sort of response from anyone. I checked around my cell again. This time, that noise actually could have come from a few places. Maybe a bolt fell from my bed. Maybe a pipe fell from the sink just a few inches away from me. I continued to stand, facing away from my bed for about a minute to try and calm myself down after having the wits scared out of me, again. Probably for about the tenth time today. I turned back to face my bed. Suddenly I felt mortified as I stared at the wall where my bed sat, looking at something strange which immediately caught my eye.

I backed up in terror, looking horrified at the brick wall above the bed. I turned away from it only for a short time, only to turn back to see a horrifying message written in capitals right where I was just laying. I felt my heart sink, staring at the letters which now dawned on the wall, which looked like they were written with chalk.

"CARPE DIEM"

"Carpe, Diem?!" I asked shakily. "What, what's that?" Was that message there before I just realized it? As I said that, the cold breeze that had hit me before suddenly struck me again. I shivered, feeling another chill race across my body. Now I really felt scared. I couldn't piece together what the heck was going on. Strange noises, stranger messages? What was this?

"Is somebody there?" I muttered, feeling a nervous choking at my throat as I spoke, due to my fear which felt like it was building fast. "Answer me!"

Once again, I didn't hear a damn word. My enotions were already flowing harshly enough with everything that had happened. Now, something was scaring me to the point where I felt like I couldn't take the emotional stress. I wanted to yell, to cry, to punch something, to scream. I felt like something was now watching me. Stalking me while I felt completely helpless to stop them. I started looking around the room again, taking my mind off of the creepy message which made no sense to try and figure out what was bothering me. And who.

"Who are you?!" I shouted, paranoid. I looked around the room, frustratedly searching for whoever seemed to be watching and pestering me. "Who the hell are you?!" In a silence that sat for only a minute after I'd asked my final question...

"Who do you think?..."

They responded.

I screamed. Out of nowhere at all, a strange voice suddenly whispered in me ear! I feel to the ground with shock, hearing the voice of what sounded like some kind of echo whipser and buzz around in my eardrum. "Who do you think?" That's what they said. I swallowed my spit terrified, unable to comprehend what the heck just occured. A creepy message, weird noises and now, a voice?! This couldn't of been real. This had to of been some kind of twisted, freaked out nightmare! It had to be. There was no other explanation for it. It couldn't of been reality.

"Who are you?!" I shrieked, catching the attention of somebody outside of my room. Instantly with the sound of my terrified yelling I heard the sound outside of my cell of a guard coming to check up on me. I panned my eyes to the door as I heard the sound of boots pounding across the ground and keys jingling from his belt. The guard walked up to my cell and glanced, seeing me standing up and shaking horribly. He gave me somewhat of a concerned look as his eyes met mine.

"You okay kid?" He asked with a confused tone in his voice. "I heard shouting coming from here. Is everything alright?" I stared at him with disbelief. The wall with the message which still sat clearly visible above my bed was totally visible from his point of view. How could he not of seen it? "Carpe Diem". What did that mean? The guard continued to stare questionably at me as I finally managed to speak after absorbing so much.

"Do I look alright to you?" I growled at him. " Look behind me! The wall!"

The guard shook his head at me with hilarity, slightly cackling at my response to his question. What was so funny to him?

"It's just a wall, kid." He sneered. "Their's nothing wrong with it. Now, stop worrying about inanimate objects and go back to sleep."

"Can't you see the message on the wall?" I asked him, looking back to see if the message was still there. It still was perfectly visible in the night, even the guard could have seen it from his angle. The guard shrugged his shoulders at me.

"Go to sleep." He muttered, walking back down the hallway to where he was before. I couldn't believe it. How could something so clear not be seen by him? Blind bastard.

Now, I was sick of asking questions. No more messing around. Something talked to me, I swore. I needed to know if it was real, or if I might of just imagined it. I wasn't very tired, so I guess it couldn't of been just some illusion. Maybe the guard couldn't see the words written above me as I continued to stand, but I could. Those two words, "Carpe Diem" sat just above the bed which I was now questioning whether I should sit on or not. I looked around the room for the source of the voice again, turning around to look at the darkest corner of the room which sat behind me. My heart jumped horrifically at the image of what appeared as I stared there, clearly visible through the shadows.

Two glowing, glaring, green eyes.

"What kind of sick, twisted joke is this?!" I shrieked, racing towards the door of my cell in a panic. Someone, or something, was defintely in my room. I banged on my door as fast as I could, feeling my heart racing with terror as I began yelling out for help, hoping the guard would come back to see what was going on. Now, I knew that this was much more serious than I'd previously thought. This, this was a ghost stalking me. A ghost, like the one's we've been seeing all over town ever since Danny Phantom first appeared just a few months back. I looked back at the eyes, which continued to look at me emotionlessly. I fell to the ground with exhaustion as I kept pounding on my cell door, fearing for my life now more than ever before. The killing of another human being, that was scary enough. Now, something was stalking me in the darkness? The eyes paralyzed me with their stern gaze, making me feel like something was about to kill me. The voice in the blackness spoke again as I started to cry again with mortifility.

"Dash...no more." It moaned. "Cry no more..." Too busy being scared, I ignored the voice's words which whispered through my ears. I looked at the eyes in the darkness uneasily, too scared of their gaze to move another inch from where I laid.

"Please, don't hurt me!" I begged, looking at the door for a brief second to see if the guard was coming or not. "I honestly have nothing you would want. I have nothing for you to take from me! My life is gone as of today! I made a horrible mistake that cost me everything I loved! Please don't hurt me! I've had enough damage done to me today than anybody should ever have to feel in their lifetime!" The eyes expression changed as I glanced back from the door into their gaze again. The eyes glanced away from me, looking at the wall where the message was still written.

"Carpe...diem..." The figure whispered sourly, sounding angered by the words on the wall which I still couldn't figure out. The message didn't seem to be written in english at all, so its meaning continued to remain foreign to me. Still mortified by the figure in the dark's gleaming eyes,

"Please...just leave me alone!" I begged again to them. Once again, the whispering in the darkness which seemed to be coming from the shadows where the eyes were glowing repeated his last sentence. This time, it was much louder and harsher spoken.

"Carpe...diem..."

I couldn't stop shaking at this point. I felt literally like throwing up from all the fear. I've never been so scared of something in my entire life than I was at that moment. I was too freaked out by the fact that something was watching me, and talking to me, that I couldn't just walk over to the eyes to see what exactly it was.

"C,C,Carpe, D,Diem?!" I stuttered. "W,What's that supposed to mean?!" I blinked fearfully, hoping that the eyes in the dark would answer me one last time. By the time I'd opened my eyes merely from that single blink...

The eyes suddenly vanished.

Once again, it took me a couple of seconds for my body to realize that the eyes had disappeared into the blackness again. I grabbed my chest exhaustedly, breathing a well kept sigh of relief. The eyes were gone, and with them, the fear I'd been feeling. Today had been one hell of a scary day, but that had to be probably the most terrifying part of it all. A ghost? Was it true that thing could have been some kind of ghost? I questioned the thought, but I didn't doubt it. I laid on the ground, relieved that the ghost had left the room. I turned my head to face the wall again, still seeing the message from before written above the metal shelf they called a bed. I muttered the words to myself, hoping to figure out exactly what they meant.

"What was that all about?" I pondered. "What the heck does, 'Carpe Diem' mean anyway? That was terrifying." I sighed in between thoughts. "But at least it's finally over with..." For a second, I closed my eyes so I could just let all of the relief escape my mind.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH HHHHH!"

"Oh my God!" I shrieked, jumping straight up back to my feet. Something just screamed! That ghost, it wasn't gone! I felt a cold breeze of air pass my face again as I stood, feeling my knees shaking with terror once more. I looked around, hoping not to see the eyes again as I looked at every shadowy spot in the room. No gleaming irises, that was a good sign. But, where the hell did that scream just come from? My cell was no larger than a small bedroom, so where could it of come from? Another cell? I doubted it. I was the only cell in this hallway. This time, the fear wouldn't even let me produce one tear from my eyes. I couldn't cry again.

After a minute or two, I managed to gain back enough common sense to try racing towards the cell door again, desperate for that guard to come back and help me.

"Please, somebody!" I screamed out, grabbing the door for dear life. Their was no sound at all from my cell other than myself yelling and pounding on the door. Hearing no noise of anybody coming down this way to help me, I turned back to face the room in horror. I stared at the corner of the room where the eyes were sitting before, watching carefully in case they decided to show up again. This was all too confusing for me, me being unable to see what was going on and who was messing with my mind. It was literally driving me more insane than the thoughts I was trying to silence earlier. I threw my hands up flusteredly, wanting to just get out of this scary place I now couldn't leave. I felt the cold air blast me again as I gestured angrily with confusion, feeling another chill hit me, but this time, I didn't shutter. I needed an answer. What was going on?

"What is this?!" I shouted miserably to the room. "What is going on?! What does it all mean?! Carpe daeum, the noises? What does that even mean?! Please!"

I threw my head in my hands panically, feeling helpless to stop the fear that was consuming me. I couldn't cry, but I started to weep dry tears as my back leaned against the door and I slid down on it to the ground again to sit down. Now I knew I wouldn't be sleeping tonight. I'd be awake, paranoid that something in the dark was going to attack me. This was defintely nothing short of being a supernatural occurance, that's for sure. I just wanted whoever was mocking me and bothering me to leave me alone already! I knew this spirit wouldn't just leave me here without making me either piss myself or have a damn heart attack. As the torment ensued from the ghost's playful haunting, suddenly a calm feeling hit me again. Calm like the ghost had just left again from the room for a minute. This time, was the stalker finally gone? Did whoever was watching me finally get bored of watching me scream and peter off somewhere? I looked around the room as I raised my head from my palms, hoping to check my surroundings this time to find nothing. I scanned the room slowly, to every corner and wall. This time, I couldn't see anything standing there or gleaming in the shadows.

"Are you, are you gone?" I whispered, listening closely for any kind of words. Nothing. Not even a squeak or creaking in the room. I didn't want to sigh, just in case I would wind up cursing myself again or wound up accidentally calling that ghost, or whatever that thing was, back into my room. I glared around, seeing nothing once more. I felt the calmness still in me, but a tear suddenly formed at the corner of my eye. I felt my eyes crying, but now I couldn't physically bawl to let the remaining bit of my fear out of me. My entire mind seemed to be out of whack from this whole ordeal, both physically and emotionally.

I remained on the floor, too terrified to sit back on the bed where the creepy message continued to lurk. I didn't want to lay back there, just in case that 'thing' tried to stalk me again. On the floor, I curled up terrified by the door, hoping that morning was coming soon and fast.

_And now, I refused to close my eyes._

**Chapter 10, done. :) I really have no other words of wisdom to put down here so, I'll just say this. Please Read and Review. Chapter 11 will be posted eventually, you know, when I actually write the damn thing. :) So please, stay posted for more updates.**

**Also, I'd like to thank "Diana Lily" sorry if my may have spelt that wrong, for correcting a huge mistake in this chapter for me. It's greatly appreicated. :)**


	11. Chapter 11: Unhoped For Preparations

Chapter 11: Unhoped For Preparations

08:06 hours

Dash's POV

Since the events of the night before, I hadn't slept. I don't even remember myself blinking or breathing for the rest of the night either, considering of how terrified I still was after being stalked for several hours by a supernatural creeper who stood in my room. I didn't want to take my eyes off of the wall, labelled with the haunting message that still sat clear as day scribbled aggressively on the cement wall of my cell. Two words that were too strange to be any words of English I knew, I studied them with my eyes to try and figure out what they meant. That ghost, or whoever the hell that was, he said the words out loud but never gave me any clear description about them. It was just "Carpe diem, carpe diem, carpe diem..." and poof, he was gone. Either that, or he just sat in silence behind me. I refused to move at all since I'd laid down late last night, scared to turn and find two glowing eyes etching out of the darkness of the room. Luckily, this torment was about to be finally over with.

I listened as I heard a guard outside of the door stop in front of my cell to wake me up for the morning. I waited with anticipation, hoping that he'd get the key to my cell off of his belt and get me out of this room. After a few seconds, I heard the sound of the key enter the key hole, turning and unbolting the door from the outside to open it. The guard who greeted me wasn't the same jerk who was teasing me the night before about my problem with the wall, I could tell just by his voice. I sat still, not moving at all to even look at him just then as he'd entered my quarters. But, I was stuttering submindedly.

"Rise and shine, kid." He muttered, quickly realizing that I was petrified on the floor. "Whoa, what the heck happened in here?"

"C,C,Carpe, d,diem..." I stuttered horrifically, causing the guard to kneel at my side to figure out what was going on with me. The guard put his hand on my arm uneasily.

"You feeling okay, kid? The guard who was on nightshift said that you were screaming nonsense all night long." He said calmly. Instantly, I felt my senses come back to me a bit. In shock of what I had witnessed the night before, I pointed aggressively to the wall above my bed, hoping to get the guard to notice the reason for my state.

"Look, look at that! This is why I was screaming! Look at the wall and tell me that that doesn't freak you out, please!" I panicked, pointing vigorously to the wall. The guard gazed at the wall cluelessly.

"What was keeping you up? The wall?" He mumbled questionably. I could see the message on the cement as clear as water. I couldn't understand what the heck was so hard about seeing chalk on a grey wall in the dark.

"Can't you see the message?" I asked. "It's written in chalk right above my bed! Was that there before last night, or what?" Okay, now I could tell in the guard's facial expression that he thought I was going nuts. The guard took the flashlight off of his belt and scanned the wall carefully, looking for the remnants of any kind of writing on the wall that could of been lingering to scare a teenager right out of his bed in the middle of the night. The guard suddenly shone the light over my eyes, causing me to cover them from the intense light he shone across my face.

"Kid, their's nothing on the wall. I just checked the whole thing." He sighed. "I don't know what was bothering you, but it sounds to me like you were having some pretty serious night terrors or something. Besides, their wouldn't be any writing in here from anybody. All messages and prophanity are washed off of cell walls immediately after they are discovered. This place looks pretty clear of any chalk messages to me." The guard's response suddenly caused my to have an uneasy pit in my gut. He couldn't see it? He couldn't see any of it? The white chalk which I could even see, he somehow was completely oblivious to it?

"How can you not see this?" I asked with a slight tone of fear in my voice. "It's right there in front of your eyes!" The guard gazed at the wall with confusion, still unable to see what I was blabbering about. I stood up with weak knees and grabbed the guy's head, pointing it gently right in the direction of the writing to try and get my point across. Still, the man sat dumbfounded.

"Maybe that message you're talking about was just a figment of some crazy dream you were having last night." He pondered.

"It's right there!" I said hysterically. "Why can't you see it?! It's right there in clear, white chalk! You've gotta believe me!" The guard suddenly glared at me impatiently.

"Look, I didn't come here to play twenty questions." He said sternly. "I came to pick you up so I could take you to see the judge this morning in her office. Your parents are here already to hear your sentencing this morning, happening in about an hour." My fear of last night's episode quickly subsided as my real life quickly took its toll again. I forgot for a minute that I was actually here because of the events of yesterday. A kid was killed, a family was torn. Everything was buzzing in my head, but instead of feeling the guilt pressing into me like it was before, it felt like my brain was attempting to accept the damages of my mistakes. I still felt like crap about it all. About accidentally killing Danny and taking his life prematurely. I sighed helplessly, knowing that I might as well hear what was about to be made of this now instead of later.

Recuffing my hands in front of me, the guard walked me out of my cell and pulled me around through the hallways of the building. I watched the eyes of some of the officers we passed as we walked, which aggressively glared at me everytime I tried to make eye contact with them. I sighed, feeling an uneasy feeling rattle in my spine. Nobody I looked at was impressed with me. Every person I tried to look at, they all looked at me like I had two heads. They looked absolutely disguisted with me. I rolled my eyes and continued walking on as the guard pulled me by my wrists into a part of the precinct I've never been in before. It was labelled, Courthouse, on the door frame above the room's entrance. To me, the courtroom felt to me more like some kind of torture chamber as we stepped inside of it, as I began thinking of how the events of talking to this judge would make me feel literally like I was being tortured. Guilt would be my noose. The judge's words, daggers. My sentence would be like being shot at the stake for what I've done. And jail? I didn't want to think of it. I know it seemed a bit overly dramatic to be thinking like this, but was it really? In my shoes, you'd probably feel the same way. The guard pulled me into the room justly, stopping as we came through the entrance and stood on the carpet in the center of the pews like benches which sat to my left in right. The coutroom was empty, not a soul sitting anywhere yet. Me and the guard seemed to be the only ones inside, until a voice suddenly spoke from behind us.

"Welcome, to the courthouse."

I tried to turn my head, but suddenly the guard pulled me forward, causing my head to jerk back to looking ahead of me.

"Eyes front." He muttered, tightening his grip on my handcuff chain he still clenched in his right hand. The guard turned around to see who exactly was speaking to us, smiling a small grin as he met the person's face with his eyes.

"Pretty early to be hanging out in here, don't you think Stevenson?" He asked, causing my eyes to shift to the right at the sound of his voice. The guard sneered. "Dash's hearing doesn't start for another fourty minutes."

"I followed the judge in here this morning. I've been here for about twenty minutes waiting for you to show up with Mr. Baxter." Stevenson sighed, shuffling around in his uniform a bit as if he was turning around or something. "You can drop Dash off with me, Douglas. He's got nowhere he can go if he tries to run off. Besides, he's a fifteen year old. How hard can he be to contain?"

"Are you sure you don't need anybody here to help you keep this kid under control?" Douglas asked. The Constable growled impatiently.

"When I say you're dismissed, I don't need any further questioning from you. I just told you to beat it." He scowled. "Now, get back to the holding area."

Officer Douglas, the guard who was grasping my handcuff chain, sighed defeated at Stevenson's request. Without another word, his grip on my shackles loosened as he slowly let go of me. The guard unhappily waltzed away from me, leaving the room with a distasteful huff. I grinned lightly as he stormed off. He kind of reminded me of a frustrated kid stomping away because he didn't get what he wanted.

Being a little smarter this time about my movements, I stayed still with my eyes in front of me just in case the Constable was going to bark at me for moving like Douglas had. At least nobody was holding me anymore like a dog on a leash, which was a relief. Stevenson chuckled behind me hilariously, as if he'd just thought of a good joke as Officer Douglas left the room. I swallowed nervously at his chuckling, which felt unsettling to my ears like nails on a chalkboard.

"You don't look, or sound too ready to face the judge this morning kid." He smirked. "You look terrible, Baxter. For one, you're shaking like a leaf. Two, you look like you haven't even closed your eyes yet since yesterday and three, you're as pale as a ghost. Heard you were screaming all night long in your sleep."

"Well, you're not too far off..." I mumbled, shocked by the Constable's assumptions. His observation of me, it was spot on. Until he mentioned my shaking, I hadn't noticed it at all. But the sleep and paleness in my face? That he got like he'd just read my mind or something. I thought deeply for a second, remembering the events of the night before and what happened this morning with the guard when I tried showing him the chalk written message. He couldn't see it. Why he couldn't see the words on the wall was a mystery to me, but maybe the words would maybe have some kind of hidden meaning that I didn't understand. Would the Constable be able to see the message? I didn't know. But the words, Carpe and Diem stayed locked in my brain. I had to figure out what they meant, before it drove me crazy. I took a deep breath, hoping maybe that somebody could tell me. It was a long shot to ask the hotheaded cop who stood just feet away from my back about something like this. But, it was worth a try to maybe shed a little light about what happened to me last night.

"Hey, Constable..." I asked, trying to sound calm as I changed the subject. "Have you ever heard of these two words before?" I heard Stevenson shuffle around behind me, as if he had just crossed his arms questionably at me.

"Have a bad dream or something last night, kid?" He sneered justly. I sighed at his remark, struggling to find words to say to explain what I was talking about.

"You could say that." I muttered. "Couldn't sleep a wink, if that's what you mean." Suddenly, the officer's tone of expression changed from impatient, to straight up annoyed with me in the blink of an eye.

"Well, how unfortunate..." Stevenson said with an aggressive tone. "You better suck it up and stop whining before the judge and prosecutor get here in about, thirty five minutes. You're in a lot of trouble kid. Beyond trouble. You took a life yesterday."

"You think I haven't realized that?" I growled back, trying to get him to answer me. "Look, I just asked you a simple question. You don't have to go off on me."

"Then stop asking me stupid questions..." He snarled. "I'm here to talk to you and prepare you for Judge Emery. Not to listen to you ask me about words. You wanna know words? You'll learn a lot of new ones while you're in custody." I rolled my eyes at him restlessly.

"Well, could you at least fake being interested in our conversation?" I scowled. "I asked you one easy to answer yes or no question! Is that too much to ask?" The Constable suddenly walked from behind me, to in front of me, getting right into my face as he spoke.

"Look, I'm not here to listen to some bratty teenager try to play Jeopardy with me." He grunted miserably. "I'm here to help get you ready to talk to the judge before we throw you up on the stand and watch you cry again like you did yesterday. I'm not your good cop, and I ain't your bad cop. I'm your neutral cop. I don't like you, and I don't like the system, But guess what? I'm forced to work for both of you. Why? Because putting people like you behind bars is something I enjoy. But, I also like helping your kind see a path to a brighter future. You see? I'm not here to answer questions. I'm here to get answers, no questions asked."

I sighed hopelessly as he finished speaking. Looks like I wasn't getting any kind of answer about my night from him anytime soon. The Constable grabbed me by the link of my cuffs and pulled me down the aisle of the courtroom, to the left of the judges stand to a stand all of my own, labelled 'defendant'. Releasing me, the Constable pointed for me to stand in my place, hoping to get me ready for my hearing.

"This is where you'll be standing, kid." Stevenson muttered. "You know, usually we don't have to show the criminals how to stand when being presented in front of a judge. They usually learn all on their own."

"So why am I so special?" I questioned, only to get an eye roll from Stevenson who still seemed a little pissed from our little arguement.

"I'm only showing you so you only have to learn the behavior of court once. Once so you don't forget." He said monotonely. "Let me tell you the basics of how you are to behaved in the walls of this room. One, you are not allowed to speak, unless you are directed to by Judge Emery. You will not interupt, backsass, belch or the like unless she states otherwise. Rule two, you're not allowed to leave this room. This is just a hearing, Dash, so their will be no prosecutor. Their will be no sort of jury, verdict or anything like that until your next court appearance. This will merely state your conditions, charges and what's about to happen to you."

"How many times will I have to go to court?" I asked uneasily.

"Depends how many times you're gonna say that you're not guilty." He mumbled. "If you just plea that you're guilty, you may only have one or two more court appearances and you'll be thrown in prison or juvinelle hall. However, if you wish to plea for your freedom by saying that you're not guilty, even though you're slightly beyond that point, then your court appearances will turn into either an inquiry, or a full out trial to prove your innocence. But your next appearance won't be in this courtroom." Stevenson gave me a stern look. "How does it feel standing there?"

Calmly to his question, I placed my cuffed hands onto the wood of the stand and took a deep breath. How did it feel to stand there? As I tried to proccess an emotion to describe how I felt standing, a cold wind blew across my face as I tried to absorb enough information from my surroundings to give the Constable an answer. It was a familiar breeze. It was the same cold air I'd felt the night before that swept across my cheeks. Ignoring it, thinking that maybe it was just a breeze coming from one of the ceiling fans which bore above my head, another cold reminder of the night before suddenly brushed past my ear.

"Danny..."

Instantly, I froze. It was the voice. The voice from the last night! I felt like I was unable to breathe for a second as the moment came and passed. Looking at Stevenson, he was still wondering how I felt about standing behind the defendant's stand. I looked at him nervously, feeling a knot build in my stomach as I opened my mouth to speak.

"Did you, did you hear something?" I asked with a shiver. The Constable raised an eyebrow skeptically at me.

"Hear what, Dash?" He pondered. "All I can hear in here is the sound of the fans above our head rotating, and the sound of you babbling more nonsense."

Worriedly, I gave the cop a stare. Did I just, imagine that? As quickly as the voice and the air came, it was gone, Just like last night. I listened closely to the air for a minute, listening for anymore noises. It sounded to me like the person who was watching me, had found me once again. Only this time, he said "Danny..." Danny?

"Swear I just heard something..." I muttered. "Didn't you? Something just said, 'Danny'. Didn't you hear it?" The Constable gave me a concerned glare, probably thinking that I was going crazy or something.

"I think one night of solitary confinement really has done your head in." He said sternly. "Better make sure that the judge doesn't think you're going off your nut, or she'll never let you out of here. All you'll be getting for talking about voices in your head will be a restraint chair or a rubber room. Your choice." Stevenson laughed harshly, but I just ignored his ignorant statement about my strange questions I kept asking him. My attention was locked about the voice. "Danny..." it called. "Danny..." I knew it could only of been talking to me about Fenton. Their was really no other explanation for it. Fenton. His name, the name that kept haunting me because of what I'd done to him. Was it now, following me?

"Ugh, stop thinking about it..." I groaned, sounding like I was talking to myself again in my cell. Stevenson gave me a weird look as I just thought to myself outloud. Quickly, I shook it off and smiled fakely, hoping that he wouldn't draw too much attention to my sudden outburst. Stevenson looked to his right, spotting a clock on the left hand side of the room which read that it was quarter to nine.

The Constable muttered. "Before this hearing starts, Judge Emery was requesting to see you about ten minutes in advance. She wanted me to write an incidence report about your behavior here and, she wanted to talk to you personally as well. Consider the fact that you walked in here a minor battery assailant and are now walking out a unintentional killer, she wanted to check up and see what kind of a person you really are."

"So, she's evaluating me?" I asked uncertainly. Stevenson sighed.

"Yep. Just to see if you're as dangerous as the crime you've so-called, 'accidentally' commited." He growled. "Come on, kid. It's only going to be for about eight minutes that we speak to her anyways. So, try not to act too nervous around her. You seem to kind of, freak out, under pressure from what I've seen."

Quickly, the Constable grabbed the link of chain between my handcuffs and pulled me away from the defendant's stand of the courtroom. He directed me to walk towards the left wall of the room into another large door of the precinct, into yet another area I've never been before. Through the doors, three more doors sat in a hallway which lead to an emergency exit. On one of the doors, which seemed to be the one we were supposed to go through to talk with Judge Emery, a note sat on the ground in front of it.

"What the heck is this?" Stevenson muttered, picking up the piece of paper smugly. I sat quietly as the officer read the note thoroughly, grunting distastefully as he dropped the note impatiently back onto the ground in front of him.

"Change of plans, kid." He said sternly. "Judge Emery won't be able to talk with you before your hearing. I guess you'll just be forced to freeball this without her, blessing, as you might call it."

I shuttered startledly. "What? She's not talking to me before this?"

"Fraid not." Stevenson sighed. "Oh well. Looks like she's in a bad mood by the sound of the note she wrote for us."

"What'd it say?" I asked, only to be cut off by the Constable.

"None of your god damn business..." He scowled. "She doesn't sound too happy with you, that's all. Then again, you just murdered an innocent kid. I wouldn't be too happy to exactly say, hello to you either." Keeping my chains in his hand, the Constable dragged me back towards the courtroom through the doors again. But this time when we walked in, it looked like people were starting to come in to watch my, hearing. I looked carefully at the audience, hoping that I'd see my parents slumped somewhere within the crowd of police, suited people and what appeared to be, journalists? The press?

I scanned the people's faces carefully, but it wasn't long before Constable saw what I was doing. He pulled my chains hard, lurching my head forwards back to looking straight ahead.

"Stop sightseeing, and follow me." He growled, pulling me away from the room through yet another set of doors on the west side of the courthouse. Pulling me into the hallway which was lead through those doors, same as it did in the east side, the Constable pushed me up against the right wall of the hallway.

"I guess you'll be having a harder hearing since Emery is refusing to see you as of now." He mumbled. "Good luck trying your cards without eyes. At least without my behavior report about you, she can't exactly play the 'going crazy' card with you yet. You better pray she'll go easy on you kid. Otherwise, you and I will be spending a little more time together."

I looked into his beady little eyes as a numb feeling suddenly crept over me. I took my glance away from his face and stared down the hallway away from the coutroom door hoping to think a little before my hearing started. Stevenson backed off, walking slightly away from me and letting go of my handcuff link so I could have a small amount of freedom. What was I going to say when I walked in there? Was I going to freak? Were more voice going to taunt me as I tried to plea my case? Was that even one of my options at this hearing? Giving into the maybe, four minutes before I would have to speak, I zoned out. I really wanted to leave this place, I didn't want to stay here. Would that woman go easy on me? As I turned my head back to face Constable Stevenson, a small whisper hissed in my ear unsettlingly. Undoubtfully, I recognized it's sick tone and rasp as it dug into my eardrum. It was the voice, taunting me again for what I hoped would be the final time.

"Good luck..."

As my blood ran cold again, I knew only one thing.

_This would not be the last of these whispers..._

**Sorry for the, three week wait on this chapter. Or two. I don't know. :)**

**This chapter took me some time, but I'm glad it's done. :) **

**Also on a related note...**

**I know I don't really say a heck of a lot on these final authors thoughts plot bubbles I leave at the end of every chapter, but this time I have a little bit of a request I would like any reader of this FanFic to assist me with.**

**You see, I have a poll set up on my profile page that I would seriously like some people to answer for me. It's been there for a while, but I took it down recently and have reposted it. I've been contemplating the idea of creating a deviantART fan club sort of group with this story. Of course, this is just so far an idea, not anything really of it yet other than a beta group I've created for it that's a little glitchy on the actual site. I was just curious if anyone might be interested in joining and/or drawing stuff based on this story. The poll is on my profile if you'd like to answer it. It'd be greatly appreciated if you did. :)**

**Well, next chapter should be posted soon. I'll try to work on it as soon as possible.**

**SilverRaven16 **


	12. Chapter 12: The Hands of Fate

Chapter 12: The Hands of Fate

08:57 hours

Dash's POV

We entered the courtroom from the hallway as the clock struck 8:55am. My hearing was to start in only five minutes, but in the three minutes that me and Stevenson stood in that hallway, the entire courtroom had suddenly been filled to the brim with people. I looked at the crowd attentively hoping to find my parents, feeling like finding them would be like my last chance of getting out of this place. Out of these handcuffs which kept me from moving. Stevenson could clearly see what I was doing as my head instantly locked onto the faces in the crowd, but instead of pulling me forward again to make sure I didn't 'sight see', as he called it, he just allowed me to scan for my family. Looking through the ocean of people, I felt my blood suddenly run cold. When my eyes found her, they locked into place and her glare cut into my nerves. I was shocked that she was here. Terrified that she actually showed up just to see me fall.

"Constable, what in the hell is she doing here?!" I whispered into Stevenson's ear with panic as I quickly turned away from her. Now, I just wanted to get out of that courtroom as fast as possible. The Constable glared at me with frustration.

"What happened to me telling you that you're not allowed to speak unless directed?" He scowled. "You couldn't follow directions that lead you in a straight line..." Ignoring his comment, I continued to speak through my curiousity.

"I know I'm just totally ignoring your rule about not talking," I said justly. "But seriously, why is she here?! She shouldn't be!"

Stevenson looked into the audience, spotting her in an instant.

"Who, Ms. Manson?" He asked me. "She's here because she really wants to see you get what you have coming. She's pretty crushed about what you did to her friend. She wants your head."

"She wants me dead, and you just let that little emo psychopath in here?!" I hissed distastefully, causing the Constable to crack a smile.

"I've never seen a boy as big as you so scared about a little girl like her..." He snickered. "What kind of damage could she really do?" I glared at Stevenson with disbelief.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, sir." I said uneasily. "She's a total loonatic! She's mean, vicious, and she was Danny's best friend. She'll have me hunted down, sir. Killed. She's not normal!"

"Sounds like a good kid." Stevenson chuckled warmly. "Maybe she could keep you in line. Or kill you if you annoy her. Either way, she sounds pretty reasonable. I'm pretty sure you're just overexaggerating, but then again, you did kill her friend. Of course she's probably pissed at you, Baxter. I bet you that the whole, 'eye for an eye' scenerio is just playing in her head right now. Thinking of ways that she's gonna be able to get back at you for what you did to her buddy." The thought of Sam's thinking process about how she was thinking about enacting some kind of revenge caused me to shutter. Stevenson was probably right on the nail with that thought. Her anger and rage against me for accidentaly killing Danny was probably swirling in her mind like a cyclone, plotting to take me down for what happened.

As we walked closer to my stand in the courtroom, I glanced at her one last time, seeing her shoot me one of the weirdest looks of anger I've ever seen. She glared flusteredly at me, slightly lifting her lip up in a snarl like a growling dog, which caused me to take my glance off of her immediately in a hope to avoid any kind of confrontation with her. Looking past her, I scanned for my folks again, first seeing the strict looking face of Mr. Lancer who sat in the middle of the left half of benches before finding them at the back of the courtroom with sad expressions on their faces. My eyes locked with my Dad's as I stared uneasily at my parents, noticing that my father didn't only look disappointed with me at that moment. He looked, terrified. I've never seen my Dad look scared, freaked out or anything like that before. To seem him look almost helplessly at me was hard for me to comprehend. My Mom was in tears with a tissue balled up in her hand, crushed tightly in her fist as she tried to hold back her sorrow. Something I noticed about the audience was that Fenton's parents weren't there like Sam was. Looking closely, I couldn't see Tucker at the hearing either, or Jazz. I scanned the room several times, looking for Danny's gigantic father and his mom, who looked a lot like his sister. But, they were nowhere to be found.

My scanning of the audience ended as we approached the stands, which seemed to take an eternity just to reach. Like we'd practiced before, I stood behind the wooden table like stand, staring directly at the judge's chair with a nervousness crawling in my throat. Everything was seemingly coming to play as my hearing was about to get underway. As iId taken my position at the defendant's stand, a once again noticably vague gust of cold air trickled past my face. The same breeze of wind that had hit my face before, and in the previous night. I knew that a voice was only going to be soon to follow that gust of air, but I tried to ignore it, thinking that my mind was probably messing with me again. My nervousness was probably making me feel cold I figured. I questioned these events and voices, but in the back of my mind, I wanted to believe that I really was hearing some kind of spirit or something talking to me. Then at least, I wouldn't feel so crazy like I was losing my mind. People around me couldn't hear or feel anything, or at least it looked like they couldn't. Suddenly the crowd fell silent as I comfortably managed to place both hands on the surface of the stand, causing an uneasy listlessness to fill the room.

Stevenson looked behind me as he stood at my side with my cuffs still in his hands.

"Well, this is quite the outcome of an audience for this hearing." He muttered in my ear. "I don't think I've ever seen so many people lined up just to hear somebody's charges before. Then again, Amity Park really hasn't seen any real human crime in quite a while. This must be serious news throughout the city." I sighed miserably at his words. I suppose that this was big news. Nobody has been murdered in Amity Park in quite some time, due to the ghost problem in our city often occupying everyone's time. Nobody has time for crime anymore. An actual killing in this city would spark immediate attention.

"I don't think their's been a murder in Amity Park in over three years..." Stevenson continued. "And, the only death I can recall that happened within the walls of our town's high school was over sixty years ago. Sidney Pointdexter's suicide caused by accessive bullying was the one and only death that's happened in Casper High. So, I suppose that this would make headlines. I guess this is why you were able to have a hearing for your charges enacted so quickly." I felt my gut slightly wretch thinking about how big this was about to become. The reporters and journalists who sat in the seats behind me now suddenly made sense to me. They really were here to print out what I'd done on paper. Just like I'd suspected when I saw them take their seats earlier.

"I don't even want to think about that..." I grunted uneasily. "But I guess that could explain why the entire Amity Park Angle Newspaper team is sitting here."

Suddenly as I turned my attention off of Stevenson back towards the judge's chair, the eerie silence behind us was cut apart by the booming voice of a guard who entered the room from the eastern door where I'd just come through. He walked quickly towards the judge's chair and bellowed his loud, deep voice through the echoing room, immediately drawing attention to himself.

"Order!" He boomed, which caused me to feel even more uneasy knowing that my hearing had now just begun. "The honourable Judge Linda Emery residing."

Out of a door behind the Judge's stand, a small, slightly older woman approached the judicial chair which stood proudly in front of me. She sat down, instantly eyeballing me with a disguisted look on her face as she rightfully took her place. I felt my body tense as her stare constricted me, in a way that it felt like the constrictions of guilt that I was feeling yesterday were crushing me again.

"Today, I will be reviewing Case #1087, labelled here as a possible homicide investigation." The judge spoke out. The woman crossed her arms at me.

"So, this is Amity Park's newest criminal? This, boy?" She asked sarcastically. "How old are you?"

I looked at Stevenson, unsure whether she was allowing me to speak or if she was just asking a ritorical question. Stevenson gave me an impatient gesture with his head, telling me to say something, but I felt too nervous to speak. Opening my mouth to get a word or two out, my jaw shook uncontrollably with fear and my voice sounded like I was a mouse squeaking as I managed to quietly say my age.

"...F,F,Fifteen..." I stuttered. The judge looked at me questionably and raised an eyebrow.

"Speak up!" She barked strictly at me. "I asked you your age. That's not a difficult question to answer. How old are you?"

I swallowed nervously, but fighting off the feeling of uneasiness and discontent, I managed to speak up a bit.

"F,fifteen, mam." I said as I tried to calm myself down.

"And your name, boy?" She asked sternly as she uncrossed her arms and continued to investigate me with her eyes. This time, I wasn't about to let my nerves screw up my words. I took a deep breath before speaking again, feeling another gust of cold air blow past my face before I answered.

"Dashniel Baxter." I answered. "But I usually go by Dash, mam." The judge sat up straight and looked down at a bundle of papers on her desk.

"I suppose that's fair enough. " She muttered. "But in a public proceeding, we will address you properly by your full name. Not by your little, nickname. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mam." I answered. The judge looked at the crowd of people writing notes behind my head and sighed again with disbelief.

"What in the world is this world coming to?" She asked. "Teenagers usually can be trouble, but now you're telling me that they're taking one another's lives away over lame-brained stupidity? In the history of Amity Park, I don't think two teenagers have ever killed each other. I guess anything really can happen."

I felt a chill run down my spine as she finished speaking. I could hear the sound of my cuffs jingling from my uncontrollable shaking as my fear intensified. Judge Emery grabbed a sheet of the papers on her desk and read them carefully.

"So, the events which have lead to this hearing are as followed by reports made by Officer Donovan Smith and Constable Bryan Stevenson? And this proceeding will be determined upon these reports from the eye witness accounts of these officers?" She asked aloud, looking at Constable Stevenson with a scowl. "Do you swear that these reports contain the truth, and nothing but the truth?" Stevenson, with an emotionless stare, responded.

"You have my word, your honour." He sneered, raising his left hand up as he spoke. I turned away from him and looked at the judge as she read carefully through the papers and sighed.

"According to these documents shown here," She began. "In the late morning hours between 9am and 9:15am on March 15th, a brutal assault had occured within the walls of Casper High School, resulting in the death of a fellow student and the arrest of the supposed assailant. Is this statement truth, Constable?" Stevenson nodded casually to her question, but I continued to sit at my stand mortified that this hearing was actually happening. This whole scenerio, it seemed like it could only of been a dream in my mind. But the cold bursts of air which kept hitting me in the face could only tell me otherwise. This was, real. But, it seemed as if this whole entire affair was just too crazy to be true. I was about to hear my charges for the events of yesterday, and I felt hopeless as I listened to the judge's words as she continued to ramble about what happened. The judge continued to read through the transcripts in front of her, scanning them with precision to find more evidence against me. Watching her eyes move back and forth like a Felix the Cat clock as she read across the pages, it made me uneasy.

"Moving on," She continued. "It is reoprted that a group of witnesses were called in to speak with the school's vice principal for details of the assault. This meeting with these witnesses confirmed that an apparent suspect, fifteen year old Dashniel Baxter, was supposedly the key assailant in the brawl. It states that Dashniel was then pulled from the group and isolated within the vice principal's quarters until his parents could arrive to speak with the school's principals and two police officers who were informed of the assault. The suspect was then taken into custody, and was interrogated about the fight. The suspect was then unable to give us any usuable information about the conflict in question, so he was detained at Amity Park's Police Headquarters." Judge Emery finished speaking suddenly, looking up at me with a disapproving stare. "And now here you are."

I could help but clench my jaw as tight as possible with unsureness as she kept on reading through the reports. She was bound to find something to charge me with, if she hadn't found something already. A third cold gust bristled past my face as I absorbed what the reports the cops had written out were saying. shaking off the feeling of the icy wind with a shutter which jingled my cuff chains again. This time as the wind trickled across my face, I could see the lights which glared above me flicker slightly. Stevenson kept his eyes glued to the judge's movements as the lights surged, something he didn't seem to even notice. Keeping my chains tightly enlosed in his hand to prevent me from going anywhere, his eyes were paned looking at the papers on her desk, as if he was worried that the reports he'd filed to her had something wrong with them. I tilted my head slightly to my left and looked back wth my eye, hearing the sound of steel toed boots shuffling against the ground behind me. I could hear the sounds of people breathing, Lancer clearing his throat, my Mom kind of weeping within the silence, which sturred unsettlingly into it. The judge continued reading through a report beneath the one she'd just read outloud, and I listened closely as she spoke again.

"This final report here states that the defendant, Dashniel Baxter had a panic attack last night after he was given the news that the victim of the brawl he was involved with succame to his injuries in hospital, which landed the defendant into having to be examined by our precinct's medical staff." She sighed as she panned through the document. "He was then released and placed back into custody at around 9pm last night was scheduled to have this procceeding this morning. How quiant." Judge Emery stared at me uneasily and sighed. "Does the defendant have anything he would like to say?" I looked into her brown eyes with fear, swallowing before saying that I had no other questions.

"No mam'." I muttered tensely. Behind me, I heard Sam grunt distastefully at my answer. She mumbled something, but I couldn't hear what. Stevenson looked at me blankly, probably wondering why I didn't want to say anything. The crowd fell completely silent behind me. Before Judge Emery spoke another word, I heard that ominous rasp of the voice from last night whisper with anger into my ear as an abruff quiet shrouded the courtroom with suspense.

"Dash..."

I felt my body freeze up as the voice quickly disappeared. With an angry, somewhat sadish sounding tone, the voice said my name outloud to me. Looking at Stevenson, he obviously didn't hear it. But their was defintely no mistaking it. These voices, it seemed legitimite that I was the only person who could hear their raspy echoes. I still questioned their meaning, the words that the voice has said to me, the wall message. Carpe diem. Why could I only hear it? Why me? And why could I only see the things that this, thing. This, spirit or some kind of monster, was capable of doing? Speaking, the cold winds, the writing, the rasping, the heinous and somewhat sadistic sounding messages that were beginning to fill my head with questions and restlessness. Why was I experiencing this?

Was it because of the guilt I was suffering over what I did?

"Mr. Baxter," Judge Emery said swiftly as she placed the papers in an organized fashion upon her stand, staring at me suspensefully and snapping me out of my trance like thoughts. "After reviewing these reports, I have determined that the following events deem you nearly 100 percent criminally responsible for the death of your fellow peer, Daniel Fenton. If convicted of these suspisions, you could wind up being tried as an adult, and you may serve many years behind the bars of a state pennitentiary. Juvenille Hall is still an option for you to serve your time, but if you are charged as an adult, you will be detained in a state facility for your crimes." I felt her words sink in as my thoughts about the voices once again diminished. Me, tried as an adult? Meaning that if I lose, that I might be thrown into a federal prison for all of this? A jail full of rapists, gang members, and sociopathic freaks? No. I couldn't let myself go there, no. But, where else would I be placed now? I killed somebody. And jail is the only place society can keep somebody like me. I didn't mean to kill him, but who was the justice system to believe? The undesired killer, or the unintentional victim?

"The charges that you have been suspected of have been listed by the officers who detained you here. After reviewing these reports, I hear by have decided that our defendant, Dashniel Baxter is guilty, of all charges listed and suspected of."

No...

Guilty. Now, it was official. I was suffering from guilt, surrounded by guilt, and now I was one hundred percent guilty for this. The fight, the punch, Danny's death, my arrest which landed me in this room! I was guilty of putting myself here! Guilty of murdering a kid who had absolutely no business with me, but I was forced to beat him up over, what, rumors from my so-called friend's mouths which I weren't even sure were true? At that second, I felt my heart stop beating and felt a horrifying wave of nausea pass across my body. It seemed too terrible to be true, but here it was. Right in front of me. My life was officially changing, forever. Suddenly as Judge Emery was about to open her mouth, I heard the sound of a weeping cry from behind me as my mother stood up in shock.

"No! No, please!" She shrieked causing the courtroom to fall silent. "Please tell me this isn't happening to you, Dash! Please!" The judge grabbed her gaphel and patiently slammed it upon a wooden pedastal on her stand.

"Mrs. Baxter, order!" She commanded. "This is a hearing to determine your son's charges. One more outburst like that, and I'll have to have you escorted from this room. Understood?" With that said, I heard her take her seat once again, sniveling slightly as she plopped back down in her seat. I could not look at her, but I could hear her move around and kind of guess her actions. The judge looked back at me sharply, continuing where she'd left off before my mom's outburst as if it never even happened. She stared strictly, but I felt too devestated by the fact that I'd just been declared guilty to be bothered by her strict glaring.

"The charges laid against you are as followed," She stated. "Yesterday, it was confirmed that you were to be charged merely with battery, civilian endangerment and domestic battery. Since the victim involved in this case has unfortunately succame to the injuries sustained by you as a person, the charges have increased to possible manslaughter, or even 2nd degree murder. Now on top of the charges of battery, domestic battery and endangerment, you are now being charged with these two new felonies, as well as a possibility of more in the future. Do you understand?" I look at her emotionlessly, unable to speak a word to answer her with. Unable to breathe because of how truly shocked I was from learning that I was now officially charged with the death of another human being. I took a deep breath to calm myself down, but just as I exhaled, something strange occured. Above me, I could hear the sound of a loud surging noise which just kept escalating in volume. I looked up, and this time, Stevenson looked up too. The judge, the guards in the room, and I'm guessing everyone behind me, was looking at the ceiling as the sound kept getting louder and louder. Before anybody could question where the sound was coming from...

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

I jumped startledly. Above us, the lightbulbs within the fans and lamps which lit the courtroom each suddenly burst like high powered balloons. Behind me, a few startled screams could be heard as the lights burst on the roof. The bulbs remained intact, but the surging caused them each to explode on the inside with a very unusually loud popping noise. As the sounds quickly finished and the audience behind me began to talk, Judge Emery smashed her gaphel against her stand to regain order in her courtroom.

"Order everybody, calm down." She said with a boom in her voice. "Don't be alarmed. It seems like the power in our precinct is just on the fritz or something. No need to panic."

I sighed with relief, suddenly feeling yet another cold gust brush against my cheeks with its icy embrace. I felt a panicking feeling raise in my gut as the voice once again rasped into my ear. This time, it's words left me feeling incredibly scared.

"Those lights now know how I feel, Dash. How I feel, because of you..."

I felt my heart pounding intensely, my breathing began to go into a repetative pant. I couldn't understand why the voice just said something like that, but it made me feel even more uneasy than I was knowing that I'd accidentally just killed somebody. The judge took a deep breath herself before she spoke again, giving me my sentencing.

"Dashniel Baxter, I hear by sentence you to spend the next three months in Amity Park Penitentiary until your next court date. You will be granted bail in six hours, but your next court date is going to be set for June 18th. Do you understand?"

This time, I forced an answer out with dismay.

"I understand." I said with an almost crying tone in my voice. The judge grabbed her gaphel, looking back at me pitifully as she raised it into the air slightly.

"This meeting, is adurned."

With the slam of her wooden mallet, my world had instantly been warped. Now, I was no longer the kid I once knew. I was a stranger in my own life. and I had no control over what the future was going to hold for me. Stevenson pulled me from the stands and walked me towards the left side of the courtroom to stand for a moment before he was to escort me back to my cell. I looked back for a final time into the audience, spotting Sam who gave me a horrible glare as our eyes met again. She quickly turned away and stormed out of the courtroom furiously, as if she was going outside to scream as many curse words as possible outloud in the parking lot in a fit of anger. My parents looked at me with disappointed, and somewhat disturbed expressions as they walked out of the room behind a group of journalists. Lancer had left too soon for me to see what he thought of this whole ordeal, but I knew his reaction would probably be the same as everybody elses. He would be angry. Shocked. Disappointed.

I turned away to face the wall so I could stop seeing the daunted faces of the disappointed and angry as they walked away from my hearing. Only two things were in my mind. My future, and the annoying echoing of the voices chants racing through my head. I sighed, looking at Constable Stevenson hopelessly as I was trying to piece together the shattered remains of what I wanted to become, and who I was about to become. This was the start of something new for me. Something scary.

_But from here on out, my new life would be the only thing seperating me from reality, and insanity..._

**Chapter 12, finished. :) Sorry that this update took a while. I was unable to work on this because I was recently diagnosed with anemia, which is a vitamin deficiency that causes my body to have a lack of red blood cells and makes me frequently tired and dizzy. I tried working on this chapter, but I kept getting dizzy spells, tired spells and was unable to concentrate properly. I've been slightly slipping in school too because of the fatigue and random tiredness, but I'm getting better. (Kind of). Anyways, Dash is in some very hot water now. Icy winds, icy people, and cold words from unknown entities who some of you have somewhat of a good picture of. Chapter 13 and 14 I'm hoping to post soon, but I'll work when I can on them to make sure they get finished.**

**Also, if you haven't answered the poll on my page about the possibility of a deviantART group being started for this story, please head to my profile and cast your votes. It'd be greatly appreciated if you could. :)**


	13. Chapter 13: The Source of The Voice

Chapter 13: Source of The Voice

Dash's POV

17:41 hours

After the hearing, I was thrown back into my cell by Constable Stevenson and another guard and was told that I'd be in this precinct for another week until I could be transfered to our city Penitentiary. I refused to walk back into that secluted stone cube, still dramatized by the frightening night and the strange voice that continued to taunt me throughout the morning that followed. Stevenson forced me into my cell when I started to resist his grip when we approached my door, warning me that if I did that again, their would be serious consequences. His threats this time were not phasing my brain at all. I already knew that I was in trouble, and one question passed my mind as he shoved me back into captivity like an animal.

What could really hurt me now?

I'd realized now that I'd seriously hit rock bottom. This was it. I just threw everything I had away like trash, and now I felt like it. I felt like crap. Everything I wanted to strive for, it was forever away from me. How did one single act do this much damage to me? One act, taken too far. I thought and thought about it for a moment, feeling myself become consumed by my subconscious, the only thing which seemed to be keeping me from the bounds of sanity and insanity. I was alone with nothing to do but think. Think, and observe.

After I was thrown back into my hold, I returned to sit on my bed where the message, "Carpe Diem" still sat ominously from above. I still had no idea what those two rinky-dink little words meant, even though they continued to bother me and confuse me. What did they mean? And, why was I the only person here who seemed to be able to see them? Stevenson claimed that the words were not there, the guard said the same. What did it all mean? Where the words some kind of mind trick being shown because of my emence guilt? Or, were they a warning?

I sighed hopelessly at my pointless pondering.

"I guess their's no point trying to think right now." I muttered to myself. "If I keep up all this wondering and guessing, I'm gonna drive myself crazy."

Quickly, I realized that my emotions were only causing my mind to repeat over and over. I know that I now had nothing, and that my life was ruined because of one punch. I knew that some kind of, thing, was now mocking me because of it. All my mind was doing was repeating and repeating like a broken record or something. Feeling already unwilling to care anymore about what was about to become of me, I sat in silence with myself for a bit, trying not to think at all.

SWOOOSH!

Suddenly, yet another icy wind misted across my face and cheeks as a blanket of silence encased me. It was the voice taunting me again, it was the only explanation for it.

"Go away..." I growled impatiently, feeling absolutely annoyed with the voice and its games. Instantly, another blast of wind hit me, but this time, it hit me hard enough to move me slightly. I felt my heart skip a beat as the startling feeling of being hit by a smack of air registered into my body. I looked around, finding nothing around me other than the bed in my cell, the sink, a toilet and the walls. I was alone, but, how'd I just get slapped if their was no one here?

"Who are you?!" I yelled, as a rage of annoying frustration took over me. The thought that I was being hassled, beaten up, and bothered by somebody who didn't seem to exist startled me, and now I curiously demanded it's attention. I knew that the voice could speak, and this voice also seemed to be some kind of a ghost following me. But, I couldn't be sure. It had menacing eyes which shone through the night like little green flames, and just by the raspiness of it's voice, it sounded to me like this spirit was anything but friendly. The voice hit me again with a powerful blast of wind, this time so powerful that it pushed my sitting body to the ground. The voice then hissed at me as I fell. I felt confused about why I was being attacked by it, but its riddling words made it harder for me to figure out its reason.

"How does it feel to be beaten up like I was?!" It howled fiercely. "It doesn't feel right does it? Maybe instead of hurting people, it's about tme you understood how it feels to be hurt!"

I laid on the ground, slightly petrified. I could hear the ghost's voice in all directions, taunting and threatening me. The room echoed, and I felt scared. But calling for help from people who couldn't see what was going on wasn't about to make this problem go away like I hoped. I picked myself up and stood, turning slowly to see the room from all angles in a hope that my tormentor would reveal himself to me.

"Why are you haunting me? What have I ever done to you?!" I asked demandingly. Before I could get any kind of answer, another blast smacked me back to the ground. I hit the floor, this time feeling more angry and desperate for an answer than terrified as I once again picked myself off of the cement.

"Is that the best you can do to hurt me?!" I shouted flusteredly. "If you haven't noticed already, I'm in about as deep of a hole to hell as I'm gonna get. These little, punches to the floor ain't gonna hurt me. What's your problem with me anyways?!" Suddenly as I turned to my right, the two gleaming eyes from the night before suddenly reappeared in the same place as they had previously. The eyes seemed to have more of a tense look to them now than they did before. They gleamed a powerful neon green glow which lit the room, and the ghost's voice sounded once again unsatistfied with my questions.

"You know exactly why I'm haunting you, Dash." It growled. "You did something horrible to me that I will never, ever, forgive you for."

I stood confused, looking into the paralyzing glare of the eyes with an uneasy feeling in my gut.

"W,what do you mean?" I stuttered questionably. "What'd I do to you? I don't know any ghosts. The only ghost I actually can say that I know of is that Ghost Kid, but I don't know him very well. I have no clue why you're here." The ghost made an unsatisfying growl to my answer.

"Then you really are as stupid as I thought you were." The ghost scowled. "You really have no idea who I am, do you?" I looked at the ghost with a puzzled look, causing his words to become more harsh. "Well, DO YOU?!"

Instantly to his question, I froze uncontrollably. I didn't know what to say. This, thing, claimed to know me from somewhere, but I couldn't see myself having any connections with any ghosts other than the only good ghost their is. I had no idea how this ghost could have met me before, or where we may have met. I couldn't grasp the concept.

"How am I supposed to know who you are if I can't even see you?" I stuttered slightly as a slight feeling of fear consumed me. "If we know each other, show yourself! I can hear you, but why can't I see anything other than your eyes?"

Suddenly, the room was filled with a strong silence. The ghost's expression in his eyes changed, looking like they had somewhat of an empty feeling in them rather than their usual look of anger and frustration. It seemed like my simple question hit him hard, and his anger instantly fell apart.

"I...I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?" I asked impatiently. Now, I was the one who was feeling a little frustrated. "If you know me, then why won't you show it to me? Prove it."

The ghost's eyes stared with a lost look into mine. Now, he felt like I was and I felt like he was. He was feeling upset, and now I was angry rather than the other way around. Then again, this is also the first time that me and this ghost have actually spoken face to face like this before. He was probably a little bit uneasy about speaking with someone who was alive, just like I was about speaking to a soul of the dead. We both felt uncomfortable with another's prescence. The ghost finally spoke again after about a minute of dreadful silence.

"The only reason I haven't shown you my true form yet is because, well, you might not like what you see." The ghost sighed with a saddened howl. "I may sound angry to you, but inside, all I am is hurt. I'm not here to hurt you, but you've hurt me. And I feel so filled with frustration about it that I sound constantly angry. What I'm really now is nothing other than loss and loneliness. But, I guess you could thank yourself for that one, huh?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked him uneasily. "I don't even know who you are, how can you just, automatically assume that I did anything to you if the two of us have barely even met? If I can't recognize your voice, even though it does have some kind of a familiar ring to it, then how am I supposed to know who you are? It doesn't make any sense to me how I all of a sudden have some kind of a relationship with a being I don't even associate with. I only know Danny Phantom! If you're looking for him, go check around the city or something!"

"Dash, just shut up for a second and listen to me!" The ghost growled. "You're going off on your own little thing! If you think you want to see my real face, I will show it to you. But, you might hate me when I show you who I am. And frankly, I hate seeing myself like this as well. Why else do you think I hide constantly in the dark?"

I continued to stare menacingly into the ghost's green eyes as they pierced through the dark. This voice, it had a face, and it was willing to show me it's true form. I was slightly afraid to learn of who this ghost was, possibly some kind of murderer or thief who might of been placed in this precinct years ago who, died. I wanted to know who it was, what it was. But at the same time, I didn't.

"Who, are you?" I asked one more time. Before the ghost could say anything, I could hear the sound of footsteps walking towards my door. The eyes disappeared, andI felt another gust of wind hit me in the face as I felt the ghost move away from the corner and fly towards the door.

"Somebody's coming." The ghost whispered. "I must leave before I'm seen."

"Whoa, wait! No!" I shouted, hoping I could see this thing's face before it vanished. "You can't leave! I wanna know who you are!" The ghost sighed at me with somewhat disguist.

"You'll see me, eventually." He said scarcely. "But until that day comes, you've got a visitor, jailbird. Carpe diem, Dash. And you should do that every day for the rest of your entire life. You don't know what you had till it's suddenly ripped away from you."

"What does that even mean?" I whispered. "Carpe diem, what is that? Is that a thing, a place, a word? Tell me!" The ghost growled at me with frustration again. I began to feel slightly nervous again as I could feel this ghost becoming impatient with me. The footsteps coming towards the door began to become louder with every agonizing second of my conversation with this spector. The ghost took a deep breath.

"The words come from this poem I wrote for you. And when I was alive, I didn't write much so, you'd better listen to me when I say this. I wrote it just for you."

"I'll listen." I said meaningfully. The ghost took another breath and I felt another blast of cold air swoop across me. Now I could tell that when that happened to me, it was merely just the ghost moving from place to place. Either that, or it happened when the ghost was trying to attack me. The ghost flew right above me, passing me to land back in the corner again where he once stood. His eyes once again opened and shone in the darkness.

"Their are two words, in which I will say  
Carpe diem, always seize the day..."

"Seize the day?" I asked with a puzzled look. The ghost sighed.

"Yes." It howled. "It's not a very long poem, but it's meaningful. To both of our lives." I continued to stare, now confused by the spector's words.

"But, what are you trying to say?" I asked bewildered. Before an answer could be produced, I could hear the sound of keys jingling right in front of my door.

"Goodbye, Dash..." The ghost whispered, closing it's eyes in the darkness and returning the room back to being dark and listless. No. No, it couldn't of been true. The ghost was about to show me its face, it was about to explain to me what it was trying to say, but now it was gone. Gone again. I was about to learn of it's secrets. It's words. But it vanished again. I walked over to the corner where the eyes were just glowing, feeling around the area for any sign of movement, only to find nothing. I was back to square one, back to being confused and having no answers about this "thing" in the dark. It told me to 'seize the day', but I had no clue what the ghost was trying to say to me. I sighed hopelessly, walking back to my bed to sit down as I could hear the bang of the deadbolt on the door open.

The door opened with a squeak, allowing Constable Stevenson, as well as two other officers wander into my room, each with somewhat unamused looks on their faces. I glanced up distrustfully at the other two officers, looking unamused myself and not in the mood to be talking. If these idiots wouldn't of arrived, I would have been told everything that has been bothering me. Now because of them, I was back to being consumed by my anxieties.

"Dash, get up." Stevenson said strictly. I groaned at the Constable as I stretched on my bed, wondering why he was bothering me now after he's been leaving me alone for the past several hours.

"What is it?" I questioned distastefully. Stevenson crossed his arms at me.

"Well, according to the guard who's been walking this hallway for the past few hours," He began. "we hear that you've been talking to yourself, and even yelling at yourself."

"So?" I asked with a snarl, not really happy with the fact that Stevenson was only bothering me to get me to stop talking to that ghost. Stevenson grabbed his handcuffs from his belt and gave me a sour stare.

"Because you can't seem to get a grip on reality, we're taking you in for a psychiatric analysis." He spat. "This is the second time in just the past 24 hours that you've been caught screaming at the air and pointing at invisible objects. We're taking you to see a specialist. We think you might be on the verge of losing your mind." When he said, psychiatrist, my mind began moving at a hundred miles an hour again.

"Whoa, whoa, you think I'm going crazy?!" I asked with dismay. Stevenson's guards grabbed each of my arms and hoisted me to my feet. I tried to pull away, but the guards had me tightly in their grip. Stevenson placed his handcuffs back around my wrists, bounding me again like an animal. Constable Stevenson growled as he detained me.

"We don't think you're crazy, Dash." He said sternly. "We just need to make sure that you're psychologically sound so you don't hurt anybody. After this, we can determine when your bail bond can be set. It should be up in about a week, but, if you're not sound, you'll be here for a long, long time." And in that instant, I snapped yet again.

"Let me go, I'm not a psychopath!" I yelled, thrashing back and forth to try and escape the guards and their grip on me. My right arm managed to loosen as I fought, trying to keep the guards from holding me. The second guard was barely holding on as I continued to thrash myself out of his grip, but he managed to barely cling to me. The other guard suddenly was launched by my rapid turning, hitting the ground with a loud thump as he could no longer hold me in place. On the ground, the guard grabbed something off of his belt, but I was too busy freaking out to pay attention. Stevenson was not helping the other guards. standing at the door watching as his back up was being shaken like ragdolls by me. He cracked his neck calmly, looking at me with a angered leer in his eyes.

"Dash, you'd better knock it off, or this will end badly for you!" Stevenson scowled as I continued to flail. I refused to stop in my mid-freakout as the other guard was also launched from my flailing. He hit the ground by my bed, and I looked at Stevenson unforgivingly for trying to arrest me again.

"What are you gonna do to me, huh?" I snapped uncontrollably. "Why can't you freaks just leave me alone already?!"

Suddenly from behind me where the other guard was laying, a loud crackling sound could be heard coming from him. I turned around with my hands still bound behind my back, spotting a live electrical wave coming from the device he was holding. The guard looked at me unremorsefully, as the crackling from his device was accompanied to the sound of a loud, high pitch squeal.

"Last chance, Dash!" Stevenson said with anger. "Surrender yourself, or we will have no choice but to taser you!" I looked at the device with fear running through my veins. I was not the criminal type, or the type of guy who could easily handle pain. The taser would drop me to the floor and probably cause me to go into shock again. I turned away from the weapon to look at Stevenson and I sighed with defeat, looking down to the ground below me. But before I could say that I was done fighting, the sound of a metal spring springing into action caught my attention. The sound of metal, followed by the feeling of a metal snake biting its teeth into my back and a horribly painful tingling as the teeth made contact caused me to lurch forwards and fall. I hit the floor, screaming in pain as the tingling surged from my head to my feet, which caused my body to begin twitching uncontrollably.

"You done fighting, kid?!" One of the guards asked me as I continued to scream in pain from what was happening to me. At the time, it didn't occur to me that those cops had just tasered me because I didn't stop fighting with them when they'd asked. All I could figure out was thatI was in pain, and I didn't know why. Stevenson started yelling at the guards as I continued to flop around on the ground.

"Stop! What the hell are you doing?!" He yelled above the sound of the surging electricity in my body. "I never asked you to taser him! I only warned him that you would!" The guards looked at each other with concern.

"But, sir you..." The guard tried to say as his hand stayed firmly on the taser's trigger. I could feel myself starting to black out from the pain of the shocking I was recieving from the electrified gun in his hand.

"Give me that weapon, now!" The Constable yelled. Stevenson suddenly grabbed the taser out of the guards hand, turning the device off and releasing the prong like teeth of the taser from my back. As the device was stopped, I felt my body's tensed up muscles slightly relax. But at that instant, I could not breathe at all. The prongs released and were retracted out of my back, but my lungs felt paralyzed and I could not even muster a single breath. I felt myself also become instantly sleepy and stiff, kind of the same feeling I would get after a huge track meet or something.

"What in the world were you thinking?" Stevenson continued to shout. "What was going through your head? I did not issue for you to taser Mr. Baxter! What is the matter with you?" The guard who tasered me looked like he'd seen a ghost as Stevenson continued to rile at him. I just sat motionless upon the ground as Stevenson barked and barked at his assistants.

"I thought you told me to tase the kid, sir!" The guard stuttered. "He was becoming violent!"

"I said we were warning him to tase him so he would surrender, not that we were about to taser him, you dunce!" Stevenson scowled. "You disobeyed a command, rookie. Now, you're gonna see the D-A for it."

"But sir!" The guard pleaded, but the Constable was not pleased.

"You're both going to see the D-A if you don't relieve yourselves from duty right this second. I don't want to see either of you for the rest of the night, understand? You just tased a suspect who was about to surrender. That's not going to look to good on us now, will it?" The guards looked at each other nervously.

"N,no sir." The guilty guard said with a defeated tone in his voice. Stevenson pointed viciously towards the door, telling the cops in silence to leave my cell and leave us alone. Without another word, the guards stood themselves up, and headed out at the demand of their commander.

As the door squealed shut, Stevenson hovered over me, picking me up off of the ground and plopping my body on my bed. I weakly looked up at him as he set me down.

"Well, that escalated quickly." He mumbled. "See what happens when you don't cooperate here? You get zapped by a couple of rookies who don't know how to understand orders." I managed to blink, but I was unable to say very much after the shock. Stevenson looked at me uneasily as I began trying to close my eyes from fatigue.

"Can you get up, kid?" He asked me. To this, I managed to mutter out the word no, but not very well. Stevenson continued to gaze uneasily.

"Well, you can talk, but can you move anything?" He asked. I sighed and tried to move my arms and legs. Luckily, I could still move my limbs, even if they did still feel tingly from the hit of the taser. Stevenson sighed with relief as he noticed me move my arms and legs.

"If you can move, you'll be fine by morning." He said uneasily. "I'm not a doctor, but I would drink a little bit of water and head on off to bed. You should feel better in the morning after the shock and tingling has worn off. I don't think you're going to need another visit to the hospital ward of our precinct today. Or at least, not right now anyways."

"I don't need, help?" I said weakly as the tingling in my lips started to fade. Stevenson shook his head and smiled at me crookedly.

"You'll be fine by tomorrow. We'll take you to our psyche ward in the morning to have you evaluated instead of tonight because of, well, this. This was an accident caused by that officer. He should not have tased you."

"But, but what about my testing?" I asked mumbling. Stevenson stood up, turning towards the door to leave the room.

"We'll see the psychiatrist in the morning, kid." He said again strictly. "We would have went right now if that idiot wouldn't of hit you with that stupid stun gun. If the D-A or the doctor was to see you all estranged and weak, my butt would be in some serious trouble. If anyone asks you, none of this ever happened, you hear me? You were never tased, and this entire affair never even happened." Never happened? As he said that, I felt my eyes open widely with shock.

"But, this did happen!" I muttered as my lips continued to tingle. "We, we can't just hide this. It'd be violating my rights, wouldn't it." Stevenson turned back to face me and smiled yet another crooked grin at me.

"This, never, happened." He said with a snarl in his voice. "And if you even say a damn thing to the D-A about it, lets just say that a cop's word can go a long way in this town. Anything I say to the D-A is the truth about you. I'm that well trusted in this county."

"So, you're just going to lie about this?" I asked with another mumble. "Why?"

"Wrongfully electrocuting a minor doesn't exactly make me look too high and mighty." He growled. "Now, how about you stop asking questions and start following my orders. This, never, happened. And that is where this will stand, got it?"

Feeling too tired to say anymore, I nodded weakly at the Constable's request. Stevenson walked back towards the door while I remained exhausted on the bed. As I felt my eyelids dropping with fatigue, I could hear Stevenson pull the door behind him closed with a bang. Outside of my door, I could hear Stevenson chewing the guards out a new one, screaming from one side of the hallway to the next about hurting me when I was only trying to cooperate. The tasering, it never happened? It sure felt like it did. Stevenson wanted to keep his image clean, but who would believe me if I tried to say that this did actually happen? I'm not in the position to say very much anymore. Whatever the Constable thinks is true, it's what the judge will believe over me.

With a sigh after giving up trying to contemplate the corruption, I opened my eyes once more, looking around my room with my stiff neck and body for any sign of the ghost again to see if it would reappear now that the officers had left the room. Looking for the ghost was only something I was doing for about a minute before I felt my eyes close, and felt my body start to drift me off to a exhaustion induced sleep. I had no strength from the power of that taser, and I felt emotionally exhausted from the result of my guilty verdict that I could not continue to stay awake any longer to try and look for the ghost anymore. I relaxed in the quietness of my cell.

_"Hoping that when I woke up tomorrow, all of this confusion would start to make sense to me..."_

**And finally, the end of Chapter 13. Sorry that this update took a month, I've been very busy and, I just went through a whole wack of tests for my anemia to see if it was getting better or worse. Luckily, I'm slowly getting better, but it may be a little while before I totally get normal again. Plus, I had to go to a singing festival this week, moved two weeks ago and other stuff that has kept me on my toes.**

**On a related note with what I've been doing, I would like to proudly annouce the results of a recent poll I posted on my profile page. I would like to announce that I have successfully opened up the "One Hit Fan Club" DeviantART club for this FanFic. It's under the same admin name as my FanFiction name, SilverRaven16. To anybody interested, I need some help creating a real design for the "ghost" in this story.**

**The page is open to comments, suggestions, drawings and stuff like that. Just no flamers or critical comments. If you wish to critique me, please do so by asking me and speaking with me. Don't just post that I suck and then log off. That's just rude and idiotic.**

**Anyways, what's going to happen next? Is Dash going to the psyche ward to have his dreams of freedom crushed? Will the voice return to haunt him some more and reveal its face? Or will Dash's life just fall downhill and his quest for the truth die off? Please R&R (Read and Review.) Chapter 14 will be up around the same time next month, so please, stay posted. :)**

**SilverRaven16 (Katie)**


	14. Chapter 14: Unforgettable (Part 1)

**Hold On A Second.** Before you read my story please read my little contest notice below. This will not happen again.

**ON MY DEVIANTART PAGE, I AM HOLDING A CONTEST FOR WHAT PEOPLE THINK THAT THE GHOST IN THIS STORY SHOULD LOOK LIKE. THIS CONTEST WAS SUPPOSED TO END EARLIER, BUT I WANT TO SEE WHAT OTHER READERS CAN COME UP WITH FOR A DESIGN. THINK ORIGINAL! FOR CONTEST DETAILS, PLEASE VISIT THE DP-ONEHITFANCLUB ON DEVIANTART. AND THE GROUP NAME IS NOT CAPITALIZED, I'M JUST HAVING FUN WITH CAPS LOCK.**

**Now you may read. Sorry about that. I was requested by a friend to hold this contest. :) I would like to see what you people could come up with. It would be interesting to see all of your awesome designs.**

Chapter 14: Unforgettable (Part 1)

2 Days Later. 07:34 hours

Dash's POV

I hadn't slept in what seemed to be ages. I didn't know what time it was, or what day at the moment. My mind for the two days I was forced to spend in solitude after that cop tasered me had been rolling at such a fast pace, that my thoughts were nothing but scrambled pieces of information. I was deep in thought, so deeply concentrated on my situation, the ghost, the attack, the now numb tingling that had seized from the taser's wicked electrical currents, that it felt like my mind was having a conversation with itself due to my constant straying from one thought to the next. In honesty, it felt like my brain was taking my body to a hundred different worlds at once. But no matter where my thoughts would land me, I couldn't seem to find the answers to any of the thoughts which crossed my mind. It seemed like I was trapped in a labrynth of my own subconscious, and everytime I wanted to leave it, I could not escape it.

I felt, lost inside.

I was supposed to leave for my analysis yesterday, but Constable Stevenson told me that maybe the best thing to do would be to wait until today for it, mainly because the prong marks from that taser had burrowed right through my leather jacket and scratched across my back. He still wanted to cover up what happened to me two days before with the taser, and said that if word leaked out about it from my mouth, that I would be the one who'd suffer for it. If the doctor saw that the marks on my back were fresh, he would have reason to try and question the Constable's reputation, something he obviously cherished profusely.

The tingling from the currents left me about an hour after I was electrocuted, but the scratches from the prongs and the feeling in my body of the attack replaying over and over caused me to shutter frequently on my bed, which I hadn't moved from since the ghost had vanished. I felt no will to move at all, nor breathe anything more than shallow breaths of air. I just sat for hours, staring where the ghost was before he fled, waiting for him to return and show me his face. It's voice, it sounded strange but familiar at the same time. And its green eyes, they looked fierce, but somewhat friendly or sad as well. It bothered me knowing that this ghost somehow knew me from somewhere. It also bugged me that I was so close to seeing who this spector was before he suddenly took off and disappeared. I watched the wall, hoping, waiting for this inhuman creature to come back. I knew this creature couldn't just, leave, could it? It said I did something to it, but what?

"Hello?" I said quietly, hoping to hear some kind of voice respond back. My voice echoed in the room for a few seconds looking for somebody to answer it. But quickly the room reverted back to a silence. No one was there, or so it seemed. I was still alone. Alone to continue to question the ecto's words.

"Seize the day..." I muttered to myself as my eyes remained fixed to the area on the opposite side of the room. "What's that supposed to mean? Is that supposed to be some kind of, turn of phrase or something? A riddle?" I slammed the bed with my hand in frustration. "Damn it! What's this all supposed to be?!"

I turned my head toward my pillow and grunted with anger. It was then that I knew that I truly was being trapped in a sea of my own thoughts. The punch, the ghost, Paulina, my friends. It was absorbing me into a comatose of emotions, ignited by my former dreams. Paulina now hates me. The ghost keeps taunting me. The punch keeps reminding me. And my friends, well, they just keep angering me. I was truly paranoid of the inevidable. And even more paranoid with the reality of my new cursed life. I tried to set my mind to think about some things I had just sat aside for a bit, hoping to take my mind off of the ghost and my fate for a second to think about how I got to this Hell once again.

But, I just couldn't bare to keep thinking about it all.

No, I had to stop all of this wondering and questioning. Worrying about the past and everything that has happened was truly going to make me go insane. I know I've said that before. But now I truly believed it. I had to quit remembering the events of these past few days. Somehow, forget everything. If I didn't, my guilt would rot away at my mind. Then, I'd truly have nothing left.

"BANG, BANG!"

The door suddenly rattled fiercely. I turned my head to look at it, only to see the face of some guard peak his way into my room as he slowly opened my was a different guard then the ones I was used to seeing pop in to check on me. He was caucasian, looked older than all of the other guards I'm used to seeing. He looked at me questionably.

"Hey, you're Dashniel right?" He asked me in somewhat of a strange tone. I nodded my head.

"Who else would I be?" I growled, not in the mood to speak with some guard at the moment. "What other teenaged boy is being contained in this hallway, moron?" The guard quietly entered my room.

"Look, I'm not going to even try and argue with you. I do enough of that with my own wife, so lay off." The guard scowled. "I was ordered down here to come and escort you to Constable Stevenson's rendevue point he emailed me this morning." I quickly looked at the guard suspiciously.

"Am I, going somewhere?" I asked him out of curiousity. "Where are we going?"

The guard suddenly pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, intently looking through his emails to find what Stevenson had sent him. He sighed aburptly.

"Well according to protocol, I'm not allowed to say." He mumbled. "You were scheduled to go for a psychiatric analysis this afternoon. However, their is one more thing the Constable wants to do with you before hand."

I glared uneasily. "What do you mean? Where are you taking me?"

"I wish I could say, kid." The guard muttered sympathetically. "It's under orders of both our station and the Constable that we do not specify the rendevue point to you for safety reasons."

"I'm not going anywhere until you start talking." I said, hoping to stand my ground so I could get the guard to say something about where he was taking me. "I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't leave any signifigant damage on your part to just tell me the truth. Where, are, we, going?"

"Dash, I'm not going to start talking no matter how much strain you try to put on me. It's a liable oath of the job." The guard said rolling his eyes. "If you ask me, I think you should be a little bit nicer to me. I'm actually being fair to you. Stevenson is the worst cop in this division to be supervised by. No matter what day, what hour, he's going to make sure he makes any criminal he's in charge of suffer painfully for what they do, or have done. And I'm not talking about guilt. I'm talking about his strict, menacing kind of demenor that will pick on you until the day you're free on the streets again."

My eyes shifted at the guard curiously. "Wait, are you trying to give me some kind of advice? That's new from one of you. Why?"

"I'm only helping you because I see something the Constable's been blind to what I see about you." He spoke calmly. "In Stevenson's eyes, he only sees you for what you've done. However, I see beyond that. Seeing you now, I can tell that you could of never pulled off what you did on your own. You look to me like you didn't make that choice by yourself. You were pressured, weren't you? By someone else?" With a deep breath, I felt my heart stop for a moment with absolute shock.

I grabbed my chest with awe, struck with disbelief that this guard, this low ranking cop actually figured out what happened to me without even needing me to speak more than a few sentences. I felt tears suddenly form at the corners of my eyes as my feelings started taking over again. I was slightly overjoyed, but at the same time angry that the other police officers hadn't come to the same conclusion as this wanna-be cop. It made me feel as if somebody was going to stand by me when it came time to tell the truth about what happened between me and Danny. But, would he be enough to help me convince everybody?

"Wow, you're good..." I muttered weakly as I felt like I was going to start crying. "You're pretty good at reading people by just looking at them."

The guard smiled at me cautiously. "So, my assumptions were true. I heard you got yourself into this mess when you got into a jealousy fight with some nerdy boy at school over some preppy cheerleader. But, you say you were pressured into it? Care to explain how? Or are you not ready to talk about it yet?" I swallowed uneasily. I really hadn't talked too much to Stevenson about the reason of my actions yet. And by the way he tends to act super arrogant whenever I open my mouth, I doubt he'd believe me under any circumstances. I felt ready to talk, to tell this guard who was acting as the only kind person I've seen in the past four days of my incarceration the truth about why I attacked Danny that day. About what happened with my friends. I opened my mouth to speak, but quickly bit my tongue nervously. I suppose now wasn't the time to speak the truth yet.

"I'm still a little bit, freaked out by everything that's happened so far sir." I said with a wobbly tone as my tears started to race down my face. "I don't wanna talk about it right now..."

"I understand." The guard said sternly. "You can talk about it whenever you're ready. Don't take Constable Stevenson's actions to heart, okay? I have a son about your age, so I understand what's going through your mind, minus the murder and everything. You're confused and scared, and that's all you'll be." The guard suddenly glanced at his watch. "And by the time here, it looks like all we'll be is late if we keep up this chattering. I've gotta take you to the rendevue point, or Stevenson's going to be on my ass for the rest of the day."

"So, you're gonna have to put me in those stupid cuffs again, aren't you?" I sighed with defeat. "What's the point? You know I'm not gonna hurt anyone else, so why put those stupid things back on my wrists?"

"It's only a safety thing, Dash." The guard sighed back. "And if other cops saw me leaving this place with you undetained, I'd again have my butt chewed out by not only Stevenson, but the board of directors too. Get up, we've gotta leave now."

I dropped my feet off of my bed and let the soles of my shoes touch the floor. I stood up slowly, and the guard quickly clicked one cuff on my right wrist. He then grabbed by left hand and clicked the other cuff around my other wrist, instantly leaving me to feeling hopelessly constrained again. The guard, holding me by the chain between my cuffs with one hand like the other cops did before walked me out of my cell and down the hall, walking me to a large metal door at the end of my cell hallway with a fire exit sign shining a bright orange above it.

"The back door?" I said questionably. The guard snickered slyly behind me.

"Well, where else would I be transporting you?" He sneered. "If this precinct transported prisoners through the front doors in the middle of a public setting, don't you think that would be bad for this city's image?"

I blinked uneasily. "I guess that's true. You don't want people who look dangerous scaring the public away from the downtown area, huh? But, if that's the case, why are you doing it with me?"

The guard sighed at me again. "Kid, it's just like I said before. It's only a safety precaution. And furthermore, if the general public saw you out in the open after what they think you did, the public would destroy you. I'm only doing this for your own good."

Suddenly, a clue as to where I was going flashed into my mind.

"Are you transporting me to the penitentiary right now?!" I asked nervously. "I, I thought that you guys were gonna wait to put me in there!"

"Calm down, Dash..." My detainee muttered. "You'll understand when we get there."

I began to panic. "Wait, so you ARE taking me there?!"

"You'll find out when we get there, kid." The guard said slyly. "Till then, I wouldn't worry too much about where we're going. I'd be thinking more about the reason why I'm taking you there if I were you."

The guard and I walked out of the back door into a sunny parking lot. My eyes closed at the sight of actual sunlight, something I haven't seen in days. The guard led me to a red car parked close to the doors, stunning my curiousity.

"No cop car?" I asked him unsurely.

"I'm using a ghost car to transport you so we're not seen by other officers." He explained calmly. He opened the back driver side door and slowly pushed me inside. Inside of the vehicle, the windows in the back were heavily tinted. So tinted that I could not see what was to my left or right. In front of me was a barred plastic screen, which was also heavily tinted to the point where I could not see the guard as he jumped into the driver's seat. The only thing I could see out of to help me see where I was being taken to were the small holes drilled into the plastic screen in front of me which allowed conversation between me and the guard. I felt like I was in a dark box. Almost like I was trapped in a shoe box with air holes stabbed into it like a common toad you'd catch in the park pond.

"It's pretty dark back here..." I muttered as the guard started the vehicle. "I can't see a thing."

"That's the point." The guard mumbled. "I was instructed not to let you know where you're going by the Constable. You're not allowed to know where I am taking you, remember?"

"Can't you at least give me some kind of hint or something?" I begged him as we backed out of the parking stall the car sat in. We pulled out of the parking lot, driving towards our destination, which I was still questioning. I had a feeling that this guard was taking me to the penitentiary, and just was refusing to tell me even though I'd already figured it out. The two of us remained silent for the first couple of stoplights until the guard tried striking conversation with me.

"So, you were the football captain at your high school, huh?" He asked me casually. "I've heard about you before from my son. He's told me that you were the most popular boy on the entire campus. Must of been nice." Hearing about the things that I've lost made me feel unhappy about talking about them.

"I'm not really in the mood to think about those things right now." I groaned. "I'm still, again, a little bit shaken up about what's happened to me. Can we please talk about something else, Mister..."

"Campbell." The guard muttered. "Officer Moby Campbell. My son's name is Henry Campbell. You know him?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't." I muttered. "If he wasn't a part of any sports team or wasn't some kind of prep, I don't know him. Sorry."

The guard grunted under his breath. "Hmm, that's okay. My son wasn't part of your group, that I can understand. My boy's more of an academic scholar not a jock. He's more of a secluded kid, very focused on his studying. You probably wouldn't know him. Afterall, their's about five hundred kids in Casper High this year. I can see how you're unable to distinguish his name."

I tried to turn our conversation back onto the topic of where we were headed.

"Wish I could see better of where we're going." I complained. "Can't you at least give me just one little hint about where you're taking me? I know we're going to the penitentiary, you can't hide that from me." Suddenly, Moby's tone with me changed.

"You know, I can't tell you the exact location of where we're going." He said with a strict voice. "However, I'll say only these two things. For one, we're not going to the penitentiary. And two, you will probably cry when you see the outside next time I open the door and let you out of this car."

I raised an eyebrow at his statement. "How so?"

"You've been incarecerated for what, four days now?" Moby asked.

"Feels more like four years..." I groaned.

Moby cleared his throat. "You're going to hate where I'm being forced to take you, Dash. I can't believe that Stevenson is going to take you for a psychiatric analysis after this. Even I think that this method of his is a little bit extreme to punish you." I felt my stomach sink slightly.

"So, that's all you're allowed to say? Why am I going to cry? Please, tell me!"

Officer Moby suddenly went silent for about two minutes before speaking one more time for the rest of the entire ride.

"Dash for your own well being, I'm not allowed to tell you."

I demanded an answer to his strange response.

"Why?" I asked harshly. Moby sighed for a final time as we came to another set of lights. I heard him tap his steering wheel nervously.

**"Because what you're about to see will probably leave you sleepless for a very long time..."**

**I apologize for the late update for Chapter 14. I've been swamped by Grade 11 exams recently and have been unable to write. Regardless, please Read and Review! Chapter 15 will be posted with the results of the contest that I had mentioned above listed upon it. It will be updated on my birthday, July 19th. By the way, this was more of a filler chapter, but it does show some signifigance, so don't worry, this chapter will make sense in the next update. Where are they going? I will start writing as soon as my contest is over.**

**SilverRaven16 **


	15. Chapter 15: Unforgettable (Part 2)

**Please read this. And this will be the actual last time you see an interuption before my story. :P**

**The One Hit Ghost Design Contest has come to an end and I need to hear from you. Their have been several entries for the ghost's design and I need help picking out the best one to suit this story. Please visit the DP-OneHitFanClub on deviantART for more info but here is the link. **

**You can vote on my profile for the best design. The design done by me is not included in the contest.**

**Sorry about that. Please enjoy the story. ^_^**

Chapter 15: Unforgettable (Part 2)

10:27 hours

Dash's POV

I felt the minutes pass incredibly slowly. It was unbearable. I still had no idea where Officer Moby was leading me, and I was starting to worry. I felt the vehicle turn and felt the tires slam onto what felt to me like some kind of gravel road. Each tiny bumpy stone that we drove over felt like a boulder, causing the back of the vehicle to feel like a washing machine as it rumbled on the rough ground.

Moby hadn't opened his mouth since he told me that I wouldn't be sleeping after this whole affair. I tried to talk to him a few times, but he remained quiet, almost like he was extremely uncomfortable about this and didn't wish to talk about it. We seemed to be on the outskirts of the city somewhere, but I couldn't pin point our exact location in my head. I heard several stones hit and ricochet off the siding of the car as Moby picked up speed on the dirt road. In a continued silence, Moby drove steadily down the road and suddenly sighed with distaste.

"We're almost there, Dash." He muttered unsettlingly. "And remember, this wasn't my own idea. I can't believe Constable Stevenson is actually thinking of doing this! We don't even do this with hardened criminals, let alone a first time offender like yourself."

I tried to peek through one of the air holes in the black screen in front of me. "I know asking you again about where we're going is only going to annoy you." I sighed. "But what is Stevenson planning to do with me? Isn't it my right as a citizen to know what's going on?"

Moby began to nervously tap on his steering wheel again. "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to say. Stevenson was pretty clear about that part. I've been ordered to pick you up, drive you to the rendevue point and drop you off. One, two three. That's all."

"Isn't that kind of interfering with my human rights?" I asked with suspision. "Isn't it my right as a human being to know about where I'm being hauled off to like some caged rat?"

"It's not my justification." Moby grunted. "But, I do have to agree with you. This isn't right. What this is only going to do is damage you severely. I see absolutely no benefit of this entire meeting at all."

"So, how bad is it going to be?" I said questionably with a bit of a worried tone. "How is this going to make me cry, or damage me? What are we doing, visiting my parents?"

"I wish." Moby sighed. "If we were only visiting your folks, why would we have to completely blind you of your surroundings? No, this is a little more serious than that. But I'm still baffled that something like this is even allowed."

I cleared my throat. "Well, you obviously have some clue..."

I heard Moby sigh impatiently in the driver's seat. Sounded to me like I was making his job a lot harder than it needed to be.

"The things I do to get paid..." He grumbled. "Dash, I understand that you're curious. But for the hundredth time, I can't tell you where I'm taking you. Constable's orders, that's final."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why does this "location" have to be so secrative? It's not like you're taking me out to pasture to shoot me, right?" I tried to peek through the holes in the plastic that protected Moby from me, hoping to see his face snicker when he heard me say that. However, his reaction wasn't what I was hoping for.

He remained silent.

I paused for a second, feeling a little uneasy. For one, I still was in the dark about our location at the moment anyway, and two, I just said something pretty drastic, and he didn't say anything against it. I had a very large doubt in my mind that these cops were seriously going to take me out to some open field and kill me. That didn't sound very legal. I wasn't going to let my gut stur that conclusion to make me feel anymore worried than I already was. Forgetting the thought of that for a brief moment, I tried to peek through the holes in the plastic barrier in front of me, hoping to see some kind of outside landmark that could help me pinpoint where we were. Unfortunately, the small hole wouldn't let me see very much of anything from the back cab of the car. All I could see were trees, the gravel road in front of us, and fields on the left and right side it. I didn't recognize any of this. We were driving into the middle of nowhere and I had no idea in what direction. North, south? East? West?

I sat back down properly in my seat and inhaled. The dust from outside was slightly getting into the cracks and openings in the car, so all I could smell was sand and gravel. The dust was causing my eyes to itch, but with my hands constrained behind me, I could not rub the dirt out of them. I blinked a few times, but the dust wasn't dissolving. As I could see the dust floating in a stream through the holes in the barrier in front of me, my mind was suddenly drawn back to thinking about what happened two nights ago between me and that ghost.

Where did it go off to in such a hurry that night? It was about to show me its face, but it said it needed to leave because I had company. Since then, it hasn't returned, and it still bothered me. I needed to know more. Who was it? Ugh, it had so many questions to ask me, but I couldn't answer them. I had to know more. In my entire life, I've never been more set on knowing something. My curiousity about this figure was at an all time high, and I had to hear the truths it wanted to tell me, no matter what the cost.

Suddenly, I felt the vehicle turn.

As I was backtracking, I felt the car make a sudden right turn. I peeked through the barrier again, looking to see that we'd just turned onto another gravel road. To the right of this road, you could clearly see Amity Park. We were defintely on the outskirts of the city like I'd suspected, but I still was clueless of our destination. Their were only two things I knew existed on this part of the outskirts. The Penitentiary and a neighbourhood. But then again, I wasn't very familiar with this half of the city.

Finally, Moby spoke. "Man, they need to have a graiter come down these roads. The gravel on here is terrible. One unquick movement, and the gravel could pull us right into the ditch. I haven't been on gravel in years."

"I haven't really been to this end of town before." I said with a calm tone in my voice. "I know the Penitentiary is around here, but I'm not very clear with everything else. I've only been down here a few times."

"Their's a neighbourhood being developed just past our location." Moby explained. "Amity Acres, I think it's called. It's going to be replacing the old, erm, farmers fields in this area that haven't been used in years. Not a lot down here though. That's why all of the escaped inmates are usually caught out here. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide." I felt that feeling of worriedness in my stomach suddenly inhance.

"I hope that's not why you guys are bringing me out here." I said sarcastically. Moby cleared his throat and through the rearview mirror, I saw a small smile creep across his face.

"Well, you're lucky enough for that." He said, slightly easing my nerves. But suddenly his smile vanished. "That's not why you're out here right now. But, you're not very lucky at all I'm afraid. And I feel awful that I'm being forced to drag you there."

Suddenly, I became a little annoyed with all the secracy. "Look, I'm not going to ask you again where we're going at the moment, okay? I'm only going to ask this. How is this entire ordeal supposed to scar me, huh? Why is this so..."

Before I could say anymore, Moby suddenly snapped.

"Because you're just a kid!" He said with an angered tone which quickly went away. I felt my eyes become a wide with his sudden outburst, which was something I was not exactly expecting from such a calm demenored person like Officer Moby. In the few hours I'd known Moby, he was the only person who I seemed to be able to trust at the moment. He felt sympathy for me, something that none of the other cops would even give me the time of day to do. He was actually being nice to me, so to hear him snap like that was a bit of a surprise. He sighed in an attempt to calm down.

"I'm only saying this for your well being Dash," He said calmly as he pulled himself together. "What you are about to witness is just an inhumane act of punishment that no kid your age should ever have to see. You made a mistake, which is all said and done. But for you to have to replay that memory from start to finish just by seeing something like this. Your mental stability is going to be put in jeopardy. That's all I'm going to tell you, because we're about a minute away from it."

I kept my lips tightly sealed, hoping not to spark his anger again. I was still a little surprised that somebody like Moby would lose his temper so quickly, but then again, he said "The things I do to get paid..." earlier. Maybe this was putting a little more strain on him then I realized. But I was just as clueless to that as I was about our destination.

CRRRRRUUUUNCH!

I suddenly heard the gravel grinding across our tires as Moby came to a sudden dead stop. It was dead quiet from all angles. Their was no radio on in the car, no wind hitting the outside windows. It was horribly calm.

Like that calm before the storm.

I could hear the sound of what sounded like heavy boots coming from the outside of the car. I was nervous as hell at this point, even more nervous than I was feeling at the hearing or Lancer's office when he was interogating me. Suddenly, Moby buzzed his window down, and I could hear the sound of the boots instantly silence as the person who was walking in them greeted Moby.

"It's about time you showed up..." An estranged sounding voice growled. This voice was most likely Stevenson's, but due to my lack of vision, I couldn't exactly tell at this time. Officer Moby sounded a little uneasy as he opened his mouth to speak back to his superior officer.

"Well, on gravel you can never be too careful." Moby sighed. Stevenson shuffled slightly and cleared his throat suttlely.

"...You know, Moby. If you don't have the mind to deal with something like this, leave your woman's dress at home. You can quit this investigation at any time. I'm not going to stop you. If you are too much of a heavy heart to deal with something like this, fine by me. I'm not going to stop the door from smacking you on your way out of the precinct."

Moby stretched calmly to the Constable's warning, addressing him kinda casually even though you could still clearly tell he was super nervous.

"Yes, the option to quit helping you in this case is always on my mind." Moby muttered. "But that would cause me to have to give up my badge, pay and my life would instantly be ruined. Why place such a jeopardy upon myself and my family? I'm not planning on leaving this investigation, at least not now."

"Glad to see you're not stupid enough to just leave your job bcause you're too scared to act like a man. We're dealing with a teenaged killer here. This might leave some strain upon yourself, and your loved ones."

"Like that's any different than what I deal with now?" Moby asked with a sneer. "It's not like doing this case is going to kill me. So, are we going to get this over with, or what?" Stevenson sighed with a strict sounding demenor in his breath.

"Unlock the back doors."

Suddenly, the back doors both clicked and my passenger side door swung open, greeting my darkened eyes to a blinding light of the outside sun. I closed my eyes as my pupils made contact with the sun's rays, only to be grabbed by two familiar hands who lifted me out of the car. As my eyesight cleared, I looked up only to see Stevenson and Moby looking strictly at me.

"W,what's going on?" I asked with confusion. "Where are we?"

Without another word the Constable pulled me out of the vehicle and placed a brown jacket across my shoulders. He then placed a baseball cap on my head and placed a put a pair of lenseless glasses over my eyes. I looked up at him questionably.

"What are you doing?" I asked him sickly, looking up at the brim of baseball cap which bocked the sun from hitting my eyes any further. It was strange. At this point, I was confused to no end. Finally after a few seconds of silence, Stevenson spoke.

"It's a disguise, Dash." He muttered impatiently. "So the people here have no idea who you are. If these people saw you, we'd be in for a riot on our hands." I felt my left eyebrow raise with suspision.

"You guys are doing what, showing me to the general public? Is that what this whole secret affair has been about?" I asked disgrunted. "If the point of showing me to the public is to reveal me, then why hide my face from them? If they want their apparent, 'killer' in the media, then why make it so that I'm hidden from their view?" Suddenly, Officer Moby mumbled something to me.

"That's because we're not showing you to the general public." He hummed uneasily. "In fact, that's the complete opposite of what Constable Stevenson has in mind."

"Then...w,why are we here?" I asked nervously to both of the officers as Stevenson suddenly let go of my chains and grabbed me by my shoulders. The Constable turned my body around to face behind myself, but at the instant my eyes locked onto the scenery behind me, I felt my heart stop.

A crowd of people stood off to the distance behind Moby's car, all dressed in a black attire as they were crowded around something which I could not see. Around them, tombstones sat on each side, hundreds of them in fact. It took my brain a couple of seconds to understand where we were. It seemed that the officers brought me to Amity Park Cemetary, and the reality of why they had brought me here sunk in slowly like a deep, toxic venom into my blood. The venom of reality, which was hard for me to take. I slowly turned my head to look at Stevenson with shock, but he remained stone faced with me.

"I'd like to sit here with you Dash, and happily welcome you to the disaster you have just created." The Constable boomed. "All of those people down there. The innocent lives you have tarnished with your idiotic actions and your childish demenor who now have to suffer either vocally or in silence." Suddenly, Stevenson pushed me forward a bit with his hands pushing me in the direction of what was occuring in front of me. "Now, why don't we take a closer look?"

Instantly, I jammed my heels into the ground, preventing Stevenson from moving me any further.

"No! I'm not going down there!" I said with panic, only to have my mouth covered by Moby. Officer Moby looked at me with a pained expression on his face as the Constable stopped trying to move me. He pulled his walkie talkie off of the side of his uniform, changing it to one of the registered channels on the dial and then placed it against my ear. I didn't know why he was doing this, until suddenly, I heard the sound of people talking which sounded like familiar voices. I listened closely to their speaking, but instantly I could tell that this conversation was coming from right in front of me.

"This boy was a son taken far too soon." said the man who was standing in front of all the people, who seemed to be the minister. "In his afterlife, only hopes of grace and happiness can be assured, seeing as now this teen is bid to lay in a better place. A life which was taken by the hands of jealousy and discontent can only assure themselves a unholy place in the devil's chamber down below. Hopefully, the person responsible for this young man's death is brought to justice. But all we can say today to this young boy is that we hope he will rest in peace. When the time arrives, Jack and Maddie hope to meet their son again when their own times come. A family shattered by tragedy, can only be repaired when they are brought back together in the afterlife."

With the words of the minister, my hole body was frozen with fear. But before my brain could let all of those horrible words sink into my thoughts, Jazz's voice suddenly filled the walkie talkie.

"Let us all...remember my brother for who he was..." She weeped. "And let's not just remember him as the kid who was taken too early. ...I hope that creep who hurt my baby brother...gets exactly what he deserves..."

"Jazz..." I mumbled as a tear suddenly formed in my eye. I couldn't take it anymore. Just hearing the work of something I never meant to do was making me sick to my stomach. Before I could start to weep myself, the minister said one final statement.

"Now, a moment of silence." He said gravely. "As we've said our final goodbyes, let us remember him fondly as we lower his casket into the forsaken ground, where he will lay at rest until the day the Fenton's reunite yet again."

And then, the crowd of people moved.

In the center of all the shadow dressed funeral goers, my eyes locked firmly onto the wooden box which sat in front of them all. It looked like it was made of some kind of really fancy cherry wood or something, but I already knew it was a coffin. Danny's coffin. The tears which had formed when Jazz spoke suddenly fell down my cheeks at the sight of the wooden box.

"That's..." I stuttered, but I was quickly cut off by Stevenson shushing me. My eyes remained firmly glued to the coffin, which looked like it was slowly moving downwards ito the ground. I watched in horror as the box slowly drifted out of my sights, into the hole which sat below it. In minutes, he was gone inside of his box, six feet below everyone's feet. And as I heard his mom and sister begin to cry through the radio against my ear, I heard the sound of one more voice in the background. And this voice slightly scared me. It was Sam.

"Danny..." She said mournfully. "I can't believe that out of everything, this would be the way you'd...die. I'm not going to let him get away with this. I swear, if it takes ten years, I'll make sure that Dash gets his just desserts. And if the justice system fails, I swear I'll send whoever I can to find him and do the same thing that he did to you. I'm sorry, and I know you'd tell me not to do something so wreckless. But this is personal now."

That's when I lost it.

My entire body was frozen, my mouth was open with shock, but not a word could I speak at the sound of Sam's angered threats towards me. Unable to control my muscle movements, I dropped the walkie talkie in horror. I was truly horrified. Terrified. Moby was looking at me at the corner of my eye with panic.

"Constable, I think this has gone on long enough!" Moby said with caution. "I don't think Dash can take any more of this. Teaching the kid a lesson is one thing. But at this rate, all this is going to do is place Dash in a mental ward. He's not a sociopath! He's just a kid!"

Behind me, the two officers were beginning to argue, but I couldn't understand them at this point. I was in such a pain induced shock of the events which I had unintentionally caused which laid right in front of me, that my body had tuned out all other sounds. What have I done?! I really did kill. And this was proof of it! I never meant for any of this, but then again I knew that already. I was just mind blown with the consequences that this one fight had caused. One hit. One punch. One act of violence, taken way too far. This was all my fault. And, how could I accept myself after doing something so, evil? I couldn't grasp this. This all seemed so fake, like it was part of some dream. But if this was a dream, then it would have to be worst nightmare of my entire life! I was processing so much, taking in so much guilty, anger, sadness and confusion that it felt like I couldn't depict fantasy from reality for a split second. Like before when the news struck me about Danny's death, I fell to my knees. However unlike the last, I didn't feel like I was going to black out. I felt more like I was about to vomit or something, as my stomach turned violently like the drum of a washing machine. I fell forwards, letting my hands hit the ground so I was sitting on all fours, feeling like I was about to get sick. But before I could do anything after I'd fully hit the ground, a familiar gust whipped me in the face.

SWOOOOSH!

I felt my eyes widen. The ghost? Was, was this him? Did he return here to tell me the rest of his story, or did he just come to see me suffer with all of my guilts and pains? I was too shocked to move my head to look for this ghost's eyes or even it's figure. But without revealing itself to me, it did whisper one terrifying thing into my ear.

"Are you happy? Are you angry? What did I do to you, to deserve this type of punishment? Dash, you don't need to see me to know who I am. I've been a thought in your mind ever since you got yourself into this mess. I didn't want this. Not to die because of one of our little conflicts. But you made my worst fears of dying young a reality. You want my name Dash? Do you really want to know the truth?!"

The tears in my eyes instantly became thicker as my emotions, thoughts and the undaunted speech of the ghost crossed my mind. I was too busy thinking, my mind rushing fast like the Colorado River, that the ghost's whisper was in my mind. But I could not understand it. Suddenly in my deep translation of thought, I felt two hands pick me up off of the ground. Moby and Stevenson spoke, but all I heard from them was white noise. Unable to answer them, the officers pushed me into the car and conversed with one another with my door open so I could see them. The ghost had only one more thing to say to me before the officers could take me back to the precinct. After a short talk, the officers closed my door, but not without the final words of the ghost which pierced my ears with a powerful boom.

"If you desire to learn the truth, Dash. Then allow me to speak it." The ghost howled viciously. The car door suddenly closed on me, but the ghost was still able to converse with me in the locked vehicle for long enough to say his last words for the moment. His final words of our conversation were short and bitter, but they would permanently scar me for the rest of my life.

"...I thought you'd be able to recognize my voice, but I suppose you really are as dumb as I used to think." The ghost growled. "Thought you'd at least have the memory to remember me. After all, it's only been four days since you killed me. Considering that that's been the one major thing on your subconscious, I thought you would of suspected a visit from me by now..."

And instantly, the world fell silent with it's final word.

_"It's me. ...Danny."_

**And that's Chapter 15. Sorry for the late update. I was recently asked to be an extra in a movie in my hometown so I had no time to finish writing this chapter. I was going to have this done by the 19th, but the job came up a day before so I had no choice but to go. On the bright side, I got to work with Lucas Till, the guy who plays Havok in X-Men First Class and in the new X-Men movie coming out this year or next. Anyways, now the identity of the ghost has officially been revealed, even though most of you knew from the time these hauntings began, but at least Dash knows now. Now, I need one thing from all of you.**

**I just recently had a contest on deviantART to decide on the best ghost design for my story. It'd be great if you guys could help me decide out of the entries which one should be the official design for Danny in One Hit. I also posted this at the beginning of the story, so just saying this is a public opinion as well as my own and I'd like some help with it. :) It's be greatly appreciated. So please Read and Review. :)**

**SilverRaven16**


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